


Heavy

by adiwriting



Series: Current!Verse [9]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Cannon Divergent, F/M, Mutant!Felicity, Post Season 2 era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-11
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-08-21 23:26:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 34,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8264348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adiwriting/pseuds/adiwriting
Summary: Sara died because of the life she led. The life he leads. And one of these days, sooner rather than later, it’s going to be him that doesn’t come home. That fear hits Oliver harder than he expects.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story deals with the aftermath of Sara's death, if that is a trigger for you, I'd turn back now.

_They say heavy is the head that wears the crown..._

****

It’s several hours later when Laurel finally falls asleep. The sun in just starting to raise over the city, and in the light of day he can no longer pretend that this is just a bad dream. Sara is dead. She’s lying on the couch in the living room with three arrows in her, because they don’t know what to do with her body. Laurel doesn’t want to call the police, and Oliver doesn’t have the heart to make her do anything she doesn’t want to. 

He pulls the blanket up to cover Laurel and places a gentle kiss to her forehead. 

“I’ll be back,” he whispers, even though she won’t hear him. 

He stands up and grabs his coat off of the back of the chair he’d been sitting in for the last few hours. He intends to make good on the promise he made to Laurel. He’s going to catch the bastard that killed Sara. 

It’s that singular focus that keeps him going. 

He doesn't allow himself to think too long and hard about Sara. If he lets it, the grief will consume him. He can’t let it. Laurel is counting on him to be strong. She needs somebody to take care of this for her and he owes her at least that much. 

After all, it’s Oliver’s fault. The only reason Sara is here instead of off enjoying her life is because of him. If he hadn’t taken her on the Gambit, she would have graduated college, found herself a good job, a nice husband or wife, and would likely be thinking about starting a family. Instead, he’d selfishly brought her along with him on that boat and destroyed any hope at a normal life for her. 

Sara Lance is dead. 

Loving, brave, strong Sara who could withstand almost anything was killed last night. It just doesn’t seem right. It doesn’t seem real. 

No, he stops himself before he starts to let the sadness sink too far into his heart. If he’s going to keep it together, he has to stop thinking about her. He doesn’t get to grieve. He has to stay strong. Laurel and Sara need him now more than ever, and he can’t let them down. Not again. 

Oliver quietly makes his way out of the apartment, careful not to wake Laurel. He locks the door behind him and is about to go down the stairs when he notices something is blocking his path. Someone. 

“I thought you left?” Oliver says, sitting down next to Felicity at the top of the stairs. 

She shakes her head and he can see she’s been crying. He wants to comfort her, but he doesn’t know what to say. 

“I stepped outside to give you two some space,” Felicity says. 

He nods in understanding. Laurel had been a mess when they’d first arrived. Felicity had tried to convince them to call the police, but after Laurel had screamed at her, he gets why she stepped out. He’d just assumed that she had gone home. He didn’t think she’d been sitting out here this entire time. 

He watches as she pulls her phone out of her pocket and hands it to him. 

“This is everything I could find,” she says. “The place is a drug haven. The cameras have all either been disabled or paint-balled by local dealers. I hacked into ARGUS and got a list of known archers. The list was about 20 people long. I tracked all burner phones in city limits and cross referenced their phone calls with known associates. I think I may have found a guy — Simon Lacroix. He calls himself Komodo.” 

“That’s gotta be close to 10,000 phones,” Oliver says, watching her closely for any signs of exhaustion. But apart from the obvious signs that she’d been crying, she looks fine. “Please tell me you haven’t been doing this all night.” 

“No,” she says. “That took me 2 minutes. The rest of the night, I’ve just been waiting.”

The two of them sit in silence. He’s itching to leave. To go after this Lacroix guy. However, it doesn’t feel right to just leave Felicity here in the stairwell when she’s clearly upset. 

“Are we really going to leave Sara here?” she asks. He can see that she thinks it’s a terrible idea. 

“Felicity—” he says, letting out a deep sigh. It’s not that he disagrees with her. It’s just that it’s not his call to make, it’s Laurel’s. “She doesn’t want Lance to know.” 

“I know,” she says. “But if it were Thea, wouldn’t you expect us to tell you? No matter how badly it hurt?” 

Oliver closes his eyes and tries to remind himself that it’s not Thea. That she’s off traveling Europe. She’s fine. 

“Sorry,” Felicity says. “I just mean that—”

“Even if I agreed with you, it’s not our decision to make,” Oliver says. 

“Pretty soon her body is going to start to decompose. It’s going to smell. And before too long, the neighbors will get suspicious and call the police. Is that really what we want?” Felicity asks. “We’re under enough heat as it is with the police finding the bunker at Verdant. The last thing we need is the Canary dead in Laurel’s apartment.” 

“I don’t give a damn about protecting my secret right now,” Oliver says, looking at her like she’s crazy. It’s the last thing on his mind. 

“You’re right. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to come off like that. Of course that’s the last thing on your mind. I just… This is Sara we’re talking about. _Your_ Sara,” she says. “She deserves better than this.” 

“You’re right,” he says with an exhausted sigh. “I’ll talk to Laurel when she wakes up. Until then, I need to track down Lacroix.” 

He stands up to leave, but Felicity grabs his wrist to stop him. 

“How are you going to do that?” she asks. “Your suit was destroyed in the fire and SCPD has your bow and most of our weapons.” 

He gives her a curious look. They haven’t had a lot of time to talk about the bunker getting destroyed and what that means for them, but clearly she’s already looked into it and knows exactly what the police have found. He’ll have to ask her about it later. Right now they have more important concerns — Sara. 

“I don’t need a bow,” he says. He doesn’t tell her that between Waller and ARGUS, and Anatoly and the Bratva, Oliver knows about a 100 different ways to kill a man with his bare hands. 

“Are you okay?” Felicity asks him. “I mean, that’s a stupid question. Of course you’re not okay. But, are you sure you want to go out there right now? Nobody would blame you if you needed some time. I can call Roy for you. He’d be happy to help.” 

“No,” he says, a little too harshly if they way she recoils is any indication. “I’m fine. I just need to catch the bastard that did this.” 

“Okay,” she says, with a nod of her head. There’s a deep sadness in her eyes, but he attributes that to them just finding out that their friend has died. 

She stands up and gives him a kiss on the cheek, lingering there for a second. He can hear how controlled her breathing is, like she’s about to start crying again at any moment and is trying to keep it together. 

He wants to say something to her, but there really isn’t anything to say. Sara is dead and nothing he says or does will bring her back. The best he can do is go out there and catch her killer and hope that provides everyone a sense of relief. 

“I’m going to go tell Digg,” she says. “This isn’t news you should hear on the phone.” 

He nods his head and walks with her down the stairs. When they get to the sidewalk outside, he reaches in his jacket pocket and hands her back her keys. She takes them without comment and gets into her car. It’s not until he’s watching her car turn the corner and he’s alone for the first time all night that it truly hits him. 

Sara died because of the life she led. The life _he_ leads. And one of these days, sooner rather than later, it’s going to be him that doesn’t come home. 

That fear hits him harder than he expects. For years on the island he didn’t care whether he lived or died. His life had gotten so miserable, that he would have welcomed death with open arms. Even his first year back, he was reckless. His life didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was saving his city, keeping his promise to his father, and making sure that his family was protected. 

This is the first time in a long time that he’s actually feared death. 

Because now he has something to lose. 

For a sliver of a moment, he allowed himself to be happy with Felicity. He allowed himself to picture a normal life for himself where the biggest stress in his day would be figuring out what restaurant to take her to. Or which tie she’d like best on him. 

For a sliver of a moment, he’d allowed himself to dream about what it would be like to be Oliver Queen. 

And if he’s being honest with himself, that scares him. Because the more he allows himself to be Oliver Queen, the less he finds himself wanting to be the Arrow. 

****

Oliver grimaces and tries not to move as Digg stitches up his side. He’d almost had him. If he’d had his bow, he would have taken him out. Instead, Lacroix had shot him with an arrow and gotten away. 

“I need to get my bow back,” he says. 

“And another Kevlar suit wouldn’t hurt,” Digg says, pushing at his wound to emphasize his point. Oliver shoots him a dirty look. 

“Unfortunately, I don’t think either is going to be happening anytime soon,” Digg says. “We can get you a new bow, but it’ll take a few days. You can’t exactly walk into the local archery store when the SCPD already found the bunker in the basement of your club.” 

“I don’t care about that right now,” he says. “We need to catch this guy. The longer we wait, the more risk we run of losing him.” 

The door to the apartment bursts open and Felicity comes rushing in with wide, panicked eyes. The dark circles under her eyes tell him she's gotten about as much sleep as he has. Which is to say, none at all. Oliver immediately rolls his eyes. He’d asked Digg not to call her, because the last thing she needs right now is the added stress of worrying over him. Clearly Digg had ignored him. 

“What happened?” she asks, gasping when she sees him.

“It looks worse than it is,” Oliver tries to reassure her, but she simply glares at him. 

“What happened?” she asks again, this time looking at Digg. 

“Lacroix grazed Oliver with an arrow,” he explains. “It didn’t go that deep. He only needed a few stitches.” 

“See, I’m fine,” he tells her, moving to sit up on the couch. He grabs his shirt off the back of the sofa and puts it on.

“You shouldn’t have been out there without backup. You didn’t even have your suit,” she tells him, raising her voice until Digg reminds her to keep it down because the baby is sleeping in the next room. 

“I need you to find me Lacroix’s location,” Oliver tells her. 

“No,” she says. “You need to slow down.”

“I’m fine. It was a graze,” he argues. 

“You’re in no state to be out there fighting,” she says. “You’re going to get killed.” 

Her words hit him hard, considering it’s the very thing he’s been worrying about all day long. How much longer it’ll be before his number gets called. If Sara can die this easily, then so can he, and he’s not ready. 

However, he can’t stop right now. He’d made Laurel a promise and he intends to keep it. 

“You’ve seen me fight with much worse,” he tells her, rolling his eyes. 

“I don’t mean physically,” she argues, crossing her arms. “I mean emotionally. Clearly you’re not okay, or you wouldn’t have been injured.” 

“I’m fine,” he repeats, grabbing her shoulders to make sure that she is listening to him. “Felicity, I need you to get me his location. It’s important.” 

“How are you fine?” she says, tearing up. “Sara is dead. A woman you claimed to love is dead and you’re acting like it’s any other case.” 

He feels like he’s just been slapped across the face. Does she honestly think that he doesn’t care about Sara’s death. Does she think so little of him that she doesn’t know how much he’s dying on the inside. That his grief is eating him up. But he doesn’t have the luxury of falling apart right now. If he grieves, then nobody else gets to. 

“I made a promise to Laurel that I would find the man responsible for this,” he says, his voice starting to shake with emotion, but he hopes that it’s not noticeable. “She is counting on me to finish this job, so I that’s what I’m doing.” 

Felicity shakes her head with a laugh, and she almost sounds bitter when she says, “Of course.” 

He doesn’t know how to respond to that, but thankfully he doesn’t have to, because she shakes it off and continues talking. 

“I don’t know what to tell you, Oliver,” she says. “Lacroix has ditched his burner phone and I’ve already hacked every database known and unknown looking for him. I’ve extended my search to include anything within a 100 miles of the city, but still nothing. He’s good. He’s not using anything electronic that we can track him to. And since he hasn’t killed anyone else in Starling City yet, I can’t even link his victims to figure out who his next target will be. The trail’s run cold.” 

“Damnit!” Oliver says, causing Felicity to jump and Digg to glare. 

“I know we’re all upset right now. We all loved Sara. And I want to catch this bastard as much as you do,” Digg says, raising his hands up. “But can we try to keep it down. Lyla only just got the baby to sleep.” 

“Sorry, I just—” Oliver stops to run his hands over his face. He’s at a loss. He doesn’t know what to do here. 

“Just find him, Felicity,” Oliver says, giving her a serious look. “Whatever it takes.” 

Felicity nods, and though she doesn't look happy about it, he can tell that she’ll do what he asked. 

“You should go check on Laurel. She needs you right now,” Felicity tells him. “I’ll call you when I find something.” 

Oliver nods and tells them all goodbye before heading out. 

****

Oliver sits in Laurel’s living room, silently watching over Sara while Laurel showers. He knows it’s impossible, but he keeps thinking that maybe, if he watches her long enough, she’ll wake up. She’ll tease them all for worrying so much and make a joke about how even death can’t stop her. 

Oliver reaches out and puts his hand on the top of her head to smooth her hair away from her face and winces at how cold she is. She’s always run hot. He remembers sharing a bed with her and how she was always a furnace. They could never sleep under the covers when she’d be in bed because she was so warm. 

This isn’t right. This isn’t how things were supposed to go for them. 

There has to be more to life than a constant stream of death and destruction. 

“How did we end up here?” he whispers, feeling his eyes well up. “This wasn’t supposed to be our life.” 

He thinks back to his life before the Gambit crashed. He was so young and carefree then. While he would never wish to be that selfish asshole he was before, he often wishes that he’d never been exposed to the darkness in the world. It feels like any chance of happiness he had went away the second he was forced to kill for the first time. He wonders if Sara felt the same way. 

She once told him that she looked into the eyes of the devil and she gave him her soul. He made a similar deal with Waller. With the Bratva. And for the longest time, he thought there was no way back from the decisions he’d made during his time away. Then he’d met John and later Felicity, and in time, he started to believe that he could be redeemed.

But there is no redemption in this lifestyle. There is only pain, loneliness, and death. If he continues on this path, he is going to die. It’s no longer a possibility. It’s an inevitability. 

Sara believed in him. She believed there was still light in him. Something to be saved. She’d told him to find somebody that could help him harness that light, and the truth is, he has. In Felicity he’s found somebody who could help make him whole again, if he’d only let her. 

Only, he can’t be with her and be the Arrow.

His phone rings, startling him out of his thoughts. He’s been expecting Felicity’s call. He’s been waiting for her to get him more information. After all, it’s been three hours. It’s never taken her this long to get intel before. 

“What did you find out?” he answers the phone without bothering to look at the caller ID. 

“Oliver?” Roy says. “I don’t know what to do. Felicity just passed out.” 

“What?!” he asks, alarmed, sitting up in his seat. 

“She was working on her computer, then the next thing I know she just starts sparking everywhere. It was like a damn lightning storm. Then out of nowhere, she passed out,” Roy says. He sounds frantic. 

“Damnit,” he says, frustrated that she would push herself this far. That she’d do more than she was capable of. He thought they’d talked about overextending herself and she’d promised to take better care of herself. “She over exhausted herself. I’m sure she’s fine. She just needs to rest.” 

As he says it, he tries to convince himself it’s true. After all, he’d been freaked out last night when she’d started sparking then later crying afterwards, and it turned out she was fine. This is clearly just something she does. It’s just a part of her powers that they don’t fully understand yet. 

“No,” Roy says. “She wasn’t just exhausted man. She’s barely breathing.” 

At Roy’s words, Oliver swears his heart stops. 

“I tried waking her up and nothing,” Roy continues. “I don’t know what to do. She needs medical attention but the bunker got blown up… What do I do?” 

“What do you mean she’s barely breathing?” Oliver asks, praying that Roy is just being overly dramatic. 

Regardless, Oliver needs to check on her. He won’t be able to function until he sees that Felicity is fine with his own two eyes. He grabs his coat off the back of the chair and rushes towards the door. 

“I mean, she’s barely breathing, man,” Roy says.

“Then why are you calling me and not 9-1-1?” he practically shouts. He throws open the door to the apartment and takes the stairs three at a time, moving as fast as he can. 

His heart is pounding in his chest and all he can think about is, not Felicity, too. 

He can’t lose her too. 

“I can’t call 9-1-1, she’s a mutant,” Roy says, like that’s supposed to somehow mean something to Oliver.

It doesn’t. He doesn’t give a damn about the world finding out she’s a mutant right now. They can deal with that later. Right now, the only thing they need to worry about is making sure that Felicity survives the night. No secret is worth her life. 

“I don’t care,” Oliver practically growls. “You hang up the phone and you get her to Starling General as fast as you can.” 

“But Oliver—” 

“Roy, I swear to god, I will put another arrow in you if you don’t hang up the phone right now and get her to the hospital,” he says. 

“Okay, okay,” Roy says. “But you’re telling her this was your idea when she wakes up and chews me a new one.” 

“So long as she wakes up, you can tell her anything you want,” Oliver says, hanging up the phone. 

He feels like his heart is caught in his throat and he can’t breathe. This image of Felicity lying cold and lifeless next to Sara is flashing through his mind and it’s nearly paralyzing. 

If something happens to Felicity, he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to go on. Losing Sara has been bad enough, but he had thought he would be able to survive it. He thought it would hurt like hell, but he’d survive because he’d have Felicity at his side to light his way. But if he loses her too… 

This isn’t how life is supposed to happen. It’s not supposed to be one tragedy after another. He can’t keep living like this. He can’t keep watching the people he loves die. He wants so much more than this. 

Oliver jumps on his bike and breaks every traffic law to get across town as quickly as humanly possible. He needs to be with her. He won’t be able to function. Not until he sees her. 

When he pulls up to the hospital 16 minutes later, he breathes a sigh of relief when he sees Felicity’s car already parked in the parking lot. He parks his bike in the nearest spot, not caring that it’s in a tow zone, and runs inside in search of her. 

When he finds Roy standing in the lobby without Felicity, he sees red. 

“Where is she?” he demands, upset that Roy would leave her alone for even a second. 

“They took her back,” Roy explains. 

Oliver goes to push past him, intent on finding her, but Roy grabs onto his arm to stop him. 

“They said we can’t go back,” he says. “We’re not family.” 

“Like hell we aren’t,” Oliver says, glaring a hole into Roy’s skull until the boy finally lets go of his arm. It’s a smart move, Oliver would have broken his wrist if he had held only for even a second longer. 

Oliver pushes through a set of double doors that lead to the examination rooms and a nurse runs after him, trying to stop him. He ignores her and begins opening every door in search of her. 

“Felicity!” he calls out, desperately. He’s not sure why. He knows that if she’s really in as bad of shape as Roy had made it sound, she won’t be able to respond. 

“Sir, you need to wait outside,” the nurse tells him. 

“Not until I see her,” he says, pushing open more doors. 

He hears the nurse call for security, but he ignores them. He doesn’t care about hospital policy. His family built this hospital back in 1905 and has paid for almost every major renovation the hospital has ever had. They can take their policy and shove it up their ass, he’s not going to stop until he finds Felicity. 

He opens a door, and finally, he sees the blonde ponytail and familiar set of pink nails he’d been searching for. 

“Felicity?” he says, rushing to her side. Her eyes are closed and she has a breathing mask over her mouth. Her face is pale and if the beeping on the monitors is any indication, her heart rate is slow. Unnaturally so. The doctor is busy attaching various pieces of equipment to her body, but doesn’t seem to be in any rush. 

Rather than let that fill him with more rage, he allows it to comfort him. If the doctor isn’t in any rush, she must not be in any immediate danger. 

“It’s okay,” Oliver says, reaching out to brush some stray hair out of her face and letting out a relieved sigh when her forehead is still warm, unlike Sara’s. 

She’s still alive. She’s still with him. For now. 

“You can’t be in here, sir,” the doctor tries to tell him. 

“I’m not leaving her,” Oliver says. 

It’s not a demand. It’s not a threat. It’s simply a fact. 

“Once she’s stabilized and moved to a different room, we’ll come out and get you. But for now, sir, we need you to wait outside,” the nurse tells him. 

“This is my whole world. Right here,” he says, his eyes never leaving Felicity, counting each rise and fall of her chest as a blessing. A sign that she’s still here with him. “And if you think I’m leaving here alone, you are out of your goddamned mind.” 

The room is silent, but he can feel the doctor and nurse having a silent conversation that he can’t be bothered with. Right now, his only concern is Felicity and that steady rise and fall. Deep breath in, long exhale out. 

Maybe Roy had overreacted. She’s over-extended herself before. She just needs some rest. She’ll wake up soon and he’ll be here when she does. 

“If she crashes, you’re going to have to move so that we can work,” the doctor tells him, and Oliver recognizes it as the offer that it is. They are letting him stay. 

“Of course,” he says, smiling in thanks. 

“Stay with me, beautiful girl,” Oliver whispers, leaning over to kiss the top of her head. “I’m right here. Just stay with me.” 

****

“How is she?” Roy asks, slipping into the room. The doctor has since left with the promise that he’ll return as soon as Felicity’s test results come back. 

“The doctors don’t know,” Oliver says, eyes never leaving Felicity’s face. His voice is weak. Exhausted. 

He’s dealt with a lot in his life, and somehow he’s always found a way to keep putting one foot in front of the other. But this day is weighing on him heavier than most. He doesn’t know how much longer he’s supposed to keep pressing forward when it’s clear that the world is screaming at him to stop. 

A shark that does not swim, drowns. 

Anatoly said it to him three years ago in an effort to help him move forward. It’s a mantra he’s said to himself many times since then that has allowed him to keep fighting even when it felt like it was pointless. 

But today is the first day he truly wonders if he hasn’t been drowning this entire time. Anatoly wasn’t telling him to keep fighting at the time. He was telling him to get out. Maybe it’s time that Oliver finally took that advice. 

“I need to tell you something,” Roy says, sounding scared and it catches his attention enough to make him look up from Felicity. 

“I asked Felicity to find Thea for me,” Roy says. 

Oliver gives him a curious look. He’s been calling Thea constantly for the last several hours, trying to get in touch with her. Something about seeing Laurel loose her little sister has made him desperate to hear Thea’s voice. To make sure that she’s okay, even though he knows she is. She’s been sending him texts of her escapades through Europe. But that doesn’t change the fact that he wants to hear the sound of her voice. 

He assumes it’s the same for Roy. 

“Thea’s in Italy,” Oliver tells him. “She sent me a text yesterday that she landed in Rome. She’ll call eventually. I wouldn’t worry about it.” 

“No she’s not,” Roy says, putting his hands in his pocket nervously and staring at her shoes. 

“What do you mean she’s not?” Oliver asks. 

“Thea isn’t in Italy,” Roy says. “Felicity tried to find her and couldn’t.” 

Oliver stands up, letting go of Felicity’s hand. He can tell that he’s missing a big part of the clue, and as much as he needs to hear what is happening, the look on Roy’s face tells him that he isn’t going to like what he hears. 

Roy pulls a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and hands it to Oliver to read. 

“It was during the Siege,” Roy starts to explain as Oliver reads the letter in Thea’s unmistakable handwriting. His hands start to shake. “We were going to run away together, but I couldn’t leave without helping you fight. And when I came back she was gone.” 

Oliver reads the final line of her letter. The words that tell him she’s never coming back. 

How many people can he lose to this life, before there is nothing left?

“I’m sorry, Oliver,” Roy says. “If I had known that this would happen to Felicity, I wouldn’t have asked her to do it.” 

Oliver takes a moment to process Roy’s words. So it was once Felicity started looking for Thea, on top of all the other things she was already doing for him to find Sara’s killer, that she passed out. It would be so easy to place the blame at Roy’s feet. He makes for an easy target. Oliver could punch him a few times and Roy would take it. 

However, he knows that wouldn’t be fair. The blame doesn’t rest on Roy’s shoulders. 

“It’s not your fault,” Oliver says. “You didn’t know. You trusted her to be honest about her limits. Hell, _I_ trusted her to be honest about her limits, but I know better. Felicity is Felicity and I should have known… I told her to do whatever it takes and she did.” 

The two of the sit in silence for a long time, lost in thought. 

“She’s going to wake up, right?” Roy asks. 

Oliver wishes that he knew, but the fact of the matter is, he isn’t so sure. After all, the world has already taken Sara and Thea from him in a single day, why wouldn’t it take Felicity from him as well. It’s like some kind of sick karmic payback for his long list of sins. 

None of this would be happening — _None_ of it — If it wasn’t for him and this oppressive darkness that follows him everywhere he goes. 

****

“Mr. Queen, I don’t know how much you are aware of Ms. Smoak’s background…” the doctor tells him several hours later, once all of her test results have come back. 

“If you’re asking me if I know that she’s a mutant, then the answer is yes,” Oliver says, looking down at Felicity, who is still unconscious. 

He’s spent the last several hours just staring at her for any sign that she’ll be okay, but the only thing keeping him even somewhat sane is the steady beeping of the monitors telling him that even if her heart is beating slowly, it’s still beating. 

When he touches her, there’s no static shock. When he runs his hand down her arm, there’s no trail of blue light. His Felicity is lost under a heavy cloud of whatever _this_ is and he doesn’t know how to fix it. He can go out there and punch as many people as he likes, but it’s not going to make her wake up any faster. He feels absolutely helpless and he hates that feeling. 

“The honest truth is that we don’t know a lot about treating mutants,” the doctor says, causing Oliver to look up at him. “Every mutation is different. Their biology is different from ours, which makes it difficult to know appropriate care to provide in situations like this.” 

“What are you saying?” Oliver asks, feeling panic start to grow inside of him.“You don’t know how to help her?” 

It’d been one thing when he didn’t know how to help. To know that even at a hospital surrounded by doctors, there isn’t anything that can be done? It’s not okay. He takes a deep breathe and tries to force himself to remain calm. 

“ _I_ don’t know how to help her,” the doctor says. “But there are people I can call. Organizations that specialize in these kind of cases—” 

“No,” Oliver cuts him off, his blood running cold at the word organizations. 

Oliver still remembers how terrified that girl Caroline had been of Essex Corps that day he’d found out about Felicity’s abilities. He remembers how terrified _Felicity_ had been. Felicity. The woman who isn’t afraid of anything. 

He can’t let this doctor call anybody. He remembers Felicity’s words clearly. 

_There’s no shortage of people looking to take advantage of young mutants._

“No,” he repeats himself. “You aren’t calling anyone.” 

“Mr. Queen, her heart rate continues to slow, and while it appears not to be having an ill effect on her health yet, I assure you it eventually will. If she were human, she’d be going into heart failure right now. There’s already question about what the lack of blood flow to her brain will do to her,” the doctor says. “We need to find somebody that can help her. I’m not that person.” 

Oliver lets out a shaky breath as he tries to figure out what to do. He can’t put her at risk of being taken by an organization that will only lock her up and treat her like a lab rat. But he also won’t be able to survive it if anything happens to her. 

“Is there anyone else we can call?” the doctor asks. “Her family, perhaps?” 

Felicity hasn’t spoken to her mother in over seven years. She doesn't even know that Felicity is a mutant. Even if Felicity wanted him to call her mother, he wouldn’t know how to get in touch with her. Her father abandoned her when she was young. She has no siblings. He is her family. Digg, Roy… They are her family. 

Then again, there is somebody that he can call. Somebody that she also considers to be family. 

“I’ll make some phone calls,” he says. “Just… please don’t call anybody.” 

“I can see that you love her,” the doctor says, putting a hand on his shoulder. “But I hope that you know what you’re doing. I would hate to see something happen to her.” 

Oliver closes his eyes and wills the image of Felicity lying dead at his feet to pass. It takes more than a few controlled breaths, but eventually it does. 

“She’ll be okay,” Oliver says, unsure who he’s trying to convince. 

****

“Oliver, where are you?” Laurel asks him when he picks up the phone. “It’s been hours.” 

“I know, and I’m sorry,” he says, pinching the bridge of his nose to will away the oncoming headache. 

This is too much. He can’t possibly juggle everything that’s on his plate right now. He feels like he’s being pulled in a million different directions, when all he really wants to do is curl up at Felicity’s bedside and cry. 

“Have you caught her killer yet?” Laurel asks. 

“No,” he says. “I’m at the hospital.” 

“The hospital?!” Laurel says. “Are you hurt?” 

“I’m here with Felicity,” he tells her. 

Saying it aloud makes it all the more real, and he finds himself blinking back tears. 

Felicity is lying unconscious in the hospital because she’d been trying to find Sara’s killer. Because he’d told her to do whatever it took, and she did. If she dies, he’ll only have himself to blame. 

“Felicity?” Laurel asks. “What happened? Was it Sara’s killer? Did they get to her too?” 

“What? No,” Oliver says. He’s about to tell her what happened when he remembers that Laurel doesn’t know about Felicity. 

“She was admitted for heart problems,” he says. It’s not entirely a lie. 

“Is she going to be okay?” Laurel asks. 

“We won’t know for sure until she wakes up,” he says. 

“So you’re just hanging out at the hospital waiting for her to wake up?” she says carefully. 

“Yeah, Laurel,” he says, annoyed. “I’m waiting for her to wake up.” 

Laurel doesn’t know that Felicity and him have started dating yet, but that isn’t an excuse. She knows how much he cares about Felicity. He isn’t just going to abandon her. 

“Oliver…” She sounds exhausted and every bit as annoyed with him as he is with her at the moment. “Every minute that Sara’s killer goes free, they get farther away.” 

“Don’t you think I know that?” he snaps at her. 

It’s not that he doesn’t care about catching Sara’s killer. He does. He just can’t be in two places at once. What does she expect him to do? 

“You promised me that you’d catch this guy,” she says. 

Oliver is tempted to scream that it doesn’t matter anymore. Not when Felicity’s life is hanging in the balance. But that’s not fair. Of course it matters. Sara matters. He just doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do. It doesn’t feel right to leave Felicity’s side. And if he’s being entirely honest with himself, he has no desire to suit up and walk headlong into danger when everyone around him is dropping like flies. 

“You’re right. I did promise. I’m sorry,” he says, trying to stop what he’s sure is about to be an epic argument. He’s known Laurel long enough to feel it coming. 

“Whatever, Ollie,” she says, and he’s sure that she calls him that on purpose. Just to get under his skin. “I’ll just find the guy myself.” 

He lets out an exasperated sigh, because she knows damn well that he’s not going to let her do that. She may have passed a few self-defense classes and have been to the local shooting range with her dad, but she is not in any shape to go head to head with a mercenary. 

“Don’t do that,” he says. 

“Why? You’re clearly no help,” she says. “I should have expected it. When have you ever cared about my family?” 

“That’s not fair,” he snaps at her, feeling the last bit of of control over his temper finally snap. He’s going on 4 hours of sleep in the last 60 hours. He’s tired, he’s terrified, and he’s not going to stand here and let Laurel disrespect him. 

“I loved Sara,” he says, his voice dangerously low, daring her to say otherwise. 

“Yeah? And look where that got her, Ollie,” she says. “Look where it’s gotten Felicity. I’m glad I’m not a woman you love anymore, or I’d be dead right along with my sister!” 

Oliver feels like he’s about to be sick. He takes a huge inhale through his nose and wills himself not to throw up. Laurel is upset. She’s grieving. It’s easier to lash out at him than it is to deal with the emotions she’s currently feeling. 

She doesn’t mean it. If she had any idea what her words would do to him, she wouldn’t have said them. She’s a good person. She’s just grieving. 

Still, it’s impossible not to think of Shado and how she’d died because he’d made a choice. It’s impossible not to see Akio’s tiny body, cold and lifeless as Tatsu sobs. Image after image pass through his mind of every person he’s ever cared about and how they’ve suffered because of their involvement with him. 

Oliver struggles to catch his breath and he’s so lost in his memories that he doesn’t even notice Digg hanging up the phone and pulling him in a chair. Nor does he notice Digg pushing his head between his legs until he says, “Breathe, man. Just breathe.” 

But he can’t. He can’t breathe when he’s just lost Sara, Thea has no intention of ever returning home, and he’s about to lose Felicity. 

“I can’t be here,” he says, standing up suddenly, stumbling on his feet. 

“Just calm down for me,” Digg says. 

“No,” Oliver says. “I can’t watch her die. I won’t.” 

He pushes Digg away and moves towards the elevator, desperate for some fresh air.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity's in the hospital because of him. Because he'd told her to do whatever it takes. And for what? Finding Sara’s killer isn’t going to bring Sara back to life. Finding Thea isn’t going to make her want to come home after running away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So glad that everyone continues to enjoy this verse. I know that this fic is a lot more angsty than the other ones, but I promise you all that what doesn't kill Oliver and Felicity will only make them stronger ;) 
> 
> Special thanks to Megan and Mel for their help with this one.

Oliver stands in Felicity’s living room, sorting through literally hundreds and hundreds of open tabs on her computer. As he looks at everything she’d been doing — tracing close to 3 million phone calls, running facial recognition on every CCTV camera in the country, researching flight manifests — it’s really no wonder that she over-exerted herself. 

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, willing his mind not to go there. Not yet. The only way he’s going to survive this day is by compartmentalizing. 

Right now, he’s focused on Lacroix. Lacroix is a problem he can tackle right now. He’s incapable of helping Felicity. He can’t bring Sara back from the dead. He can’t undo the hurt that he caused Thea. He can’t do anything about those problems weighing him down. 

He can however, find Lacroix and make him pay. He can stop Laurel from doing something stupid and getting herself killed. That is something he can do. 

So despite the doubts he’s having — the honest to god fear he has — about suiting up and continuing his work under the hood, he pushes that aside. After all, his feelings aren’t important right now.

Except, sorting through all of the hundreds and hundreds of tabs Felicity has open in order to find Lacroix is like looking for a needled in a haystack full of needles.

It’s going to take him hours to find anything.

He glances at his phone, sighing in frustration when he sees that Laurel still hasn’t texted him back. He’d sent her a message twenty minutes ago, letting her know that he was working on Lacroix and not to do anything stupid. Her lack of replay tells him that she probably already has.

He pinches the bridge of his nose trying to ward off an oncoming headache. He honestly has half a mind to call Captain Lance and let him deal with Laurel. However, he would then have to explain why Laurel is intent on going after a mercenary. As much as Oliver truly believes that the man deserves to know that his daughter was killed last night, it’s not his family and Laurel has already asked him not to. 

Oliver is going to have to find her on his own and stop her himself.

He pushes aside the research he’d been doing to find Lacroix and focuses his attention instead on figuring out where Laurel is and if she’s safe. He pulls up the tracking system on Felicity’s computer and gets to work figuring out how to activate the tracker that he has on Laurel.

****

“I don’t need your help, Oliver!” Laurel shouts at him loudly enough for anyone to overhear if they were walking by. 

If she is right and Lacroix really is here, she’s just tipped him off. He’ll be gone before they have a chance to find him. 

“Clearly you do,” he says through gritted teeth, tucking the gun she had been holding into his belt. “What are you thinking?” 

“I’m thinking that my sister needs justice,” Laurel says. 

“There is a difference between justice and revenge,” Oliver says. “I would think you of all people would know that.” 

“You’re going to lecture me about killing people?” she says, shaking her head in disbelief. “ _ You _ ?” 

“It is exactly because I have been where you are and have blood on my hands that I am telling you, this is not the way,” he says. “Killing him won’t bring her back.” 

“I know it won’t bring her back!” Laurel yells. “She’s dead!” 

The words hit him hard. It’s not that he hasn’t realized it all along. He has. Sara’s death has been slowly clawing at him from the inside. Tearing him apart a little bit at a time. But he’s been doing his best to push it down, along with the million other reasons he has to drown his sorrows. 

He takes a deep breath, closing his eyes and focusing his thoughts, like Tatsu once taught him. 

There will be time for tears later. There will be time to mourn. Now is not it.

“This isn’t what Sara would want,” he tries to say, but immediately knows they are the wrong words because Laurel’s face goes from mad to absolutely furious. 

“You don’t get to tell me what Sara would want,” she says with such disdain in her voice that she’s barely recognizable as the woman he once loved. 

The happy, passionate woman who had such a deep rooted sense of right and wrong. He looks at her now, and all he can see is hate. He tries to tell himself that it’s just the grief talking. That it will pass. Only, he isn’t so sure. 

If he can’t stop her from doing something stupid tonight, she won’t be able to take it back. She’ll be forever tainted. 

“If you do this, and by some miracle you  _ don’t _ get killed, you can’t take it back,” Oliver says. “It will weigh heavy on your heart for the rest of your life. You’ll spend your nights awake picturing the face of the man you killed. You’ll be losing a piece of yourself you can’t ever get back.” 

“I’m okay with that,” she says. 

“You don’t know that,” he snaps at her. “You don’t know what it will do to you.” 

He takes a steadying breath and tries to reign in his temper. The thought of anyone he cares about having to know the guilt of taking a life kills him. He has to live with that pain and regret every day and no amount of time under the hood will redeem his past sins. He doesn’t want that for Laurel. 

“Laurel, you almost destroyed your life last year when Tommy died. You couldn’t handle the guilt that he died saving your life. You weren’t even the one that killed him and still it drove you to self-destruction. Tell me how you’d survive murdering a man.” 

“She was my sister,” she says, starting to cry. “My little sister. I was supposed to protect her from the world and I failed. I failed her so many times. Everything bad that ever happened to her was because of  _ me _ —” 

“No,” he says, cutting her off before she can start to go down that road. 

“Really? Because she never would have gotten on the Gambit with you if you weren’t running away from  _ me _ ,” she says. 

Oliver winces. How different would his life be right now if he wasn’t such a complete asshole back then? How many people would still be alive today if it weren’t for that one reckless decision he made to run away with Sara? 

“The Gambit was my fault, not yours,” he says, but she ignores him.

“If I had been willing to listen to Tommy when he tried to tell me that maybe you didn’t all die on the Gambit, maybe we would have found her sooner. Before the League got a hold of her,” she says, and by this point she’s trembling. 

He wants to reach out and pull her into a hug, but he doesn’t think she would accept one. Not from him. 

“I was with her right before she died,” she says, this time is practically a whisper.

He leans in closer to hear her, eyebrows drawn together in confusion. She hadn’t told him this part of the story. She’d simply told him that she’d found Sara dead in an alley. 

“I wanted to ask her to come home,” she says. “I tried to get her to tell Dad that she was back, but she didn’t want that. I shouldn’t have listened. I should have made her come home with me. I should have called my dad right then and there. He would have made her come home. She didn’t have to die. I should have done more and I didn’t.”

Oliver watches her as she does her best to hold herself together. He doesn’t know how to fix this. He can’t bring Sara back for her. He can’t comfort her, because he’s awful at knowing the right thing to say. He wants to help, but he can’t. 

“Laurel,” he says, reaching out to place a hand on her forearm. “Let me call your dad.” 

It’s the logical solution. Oliver and Laurel have a difficult history. While their relationship has gotten better in the last few months since she became sober and learned his secret, the fact remains that for years, they had a tumultuous relationship. He’s not going to be the one to make her feel better at a time like this. All he will do is bring out the worst in her. 

She needs somebody that can support her and hold her up. Being with him at a time like this will only drag her into the darkness. Her dad can help. 

For all the problems Oliver has had with Lance over the years, there’s never been a doubt in Oliver’s mind that he’s an amazing father. He is the man that Laurel needs right now. Not him.

“No,” she says. “He can’t know.” 

Her face is terrified, but he presses on.

“You just told me that you regretted not calling your dad about Sara,” he says, gently. “Don’t you think you’ll regret not calling your dad now?” 

“I can’t tell him,” Laurel says. “He’s going to be crushed.” 

“Do you want me to tell him?” he offers. 

She doesn’t respond right away. He can see the battle she’s having with herself. At once, he can see both the little girl who fell off of the monkey bars and wouldn’t let anyone but her father kiss it better as well as the woman who was going to single-handedly save the world because she couldn’t stand to watch anyone suffer. 

“I can’t,” she says, finally, sighing deeply. “Not until we’ve caught her killer.” 

He nods. He wants to argue with her further, but he doesn’t. He’s said his piece. She knows where he stands. What she needs now is support, not somebody who’s going to make her feel guilty. 

She looks smaller now than she did when he’d first found her. All of the fight has left her body, and all that’s left is a broken woman with the weight of the world on her shoulders. He knows what that feels like, and he wishes he could make it better for her, but he can’t. Nothing he could say would be able to fix this for her. 

“Can I please take you home?” he asks, silently begging her to give in and let him handle Lacroix. 

She closes her eyes and shakes her head. 

“If I go home now, I’m going to drink,” she admits.

He doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just stands there staring at her, waiting for some kind of clue as to what to do next. 

Laurel must sense his unease, because she let’s out a humorless laugh. 

“You don’t have to stay with me, Oliver,” she says. 

“I’m not going to leave you when you just admitted you want to drink,” he says, not denying that she’s right. 

“No offense, but being around you right now isn’t exactly going to make me want to drink any less,” she says. 

“Laurel...” he starts to say something, before realizing that he doesn’t have anything to say to that.

She’s right. While they have been friends since they were kids and probably always will be, there is certainly a large part of their past that is filled with terrible memories. He can’t imagine, on a day like today when her entire world has imploded, that it’s easy to look at him and remember the good times. 

No. 

He’s sure that when she looks at him right now, all she can remember is the pain he’s caused her over the years. The pain he caused Sara. 

“It’s okay,” she says with a shaky smile. “There’s a meeting three blocks down.”

He nods, knowing that it’s probably the best place for her right now and he’s happy that she’s willing to admit that. A few months ago, she wouldn’t have. She’d have buried her pain in a bottle.

“Will you let me walk you there?”  

Laurel looks like she’s about to protest so he quickly adds, “Please? It would make me feel better.” 

She sighs, but agrees and the two of them head down the street together in silence. 

It’s quiet moments like this that Oliver’s been trying to avoid all night. As long as he’s moving, as long as he has a purpose, he’s able to keep his head above water. Quiet means that all those little boxes he’s been shoving his problems into start to open up again, and he’s not ready for that. 

All too suddenly, in his opinion, they are stopping in front of an old church. 

“This is it,” Laurel says. 

Oliver nods his head, unsure of what to do or where to go from here. With Laurel no longer endangering herself by going after a trained killer, he no longer has an excuse to hide from his problems. But he’s not ready to face them yet.

“Go to the hospital, Oliver,” Laurel tells him, seeming to sense his internal battle. 

He shakes his head. “I really should find Lacroix.” 

“You should be with Felicity,” Laurel tells him. 

He’d left the hospital because he felt helpless there. He couldn’t look at Felicity without hearing Laurel’s harsh words repeating over and over. As brutal as Laurel had been on the phone, she hadn’t been wrong. 

Oliver loves Felicity, but nothing good ever comes out of being a woman that he loves. And Felicity is finding that out the hard way. He feels the familiar stirrings of panic in the pit of his stomach as he pictures Felicity lying in that hospital bed.

She’s there because of him. Because he’d told her to do whatever it takes. And for what? Finding Sara’s killer isn’t going to bring Sara back to life. Finding Thea isn’t going to make her want to come home after running away. Felicity is in the hospital, possibly about to lose her life, because he’d been so focused on seeking vengeance that he’d forgotten to check up on her. He’d forgotten to make sure that she knew it was okay to take a break.

In that respect, he isn’t any better than Laurel was, going after an assassin with nothing more than a gun and blind rage. 

He’s such a hypocrite. He’d just looked Laurel in the eye and told her revenge was wrong. He’s such an  _ asshole _ . He won’t be surprised if Felicity never talks to him again after this. That is... Assuming she makes it out of this. 

He can’t be at the hospital right now. He can’t sit there and watch another person he loves slip away from him. 

How many times is he honestly going to have to live through this? 

Oliver shakes his head again. “She’s is fine. Digg’s been texting me updates. She’s still unconscious.”

“What I said to you about Felicity, it wasn’t fair,” Laurel says, reaching up to place her hand on his cheek. “You didn’t do this to Felicity, just like you didn’t kill Sara. I was blaming you because it was easier than blaming myself.” 

Oliver takes a shaky breath and has a difficult time holding it together. The more she says Felicity’s name, the harder it is to keep that box of emotions closed. 

“I can’t lose her,” he whispers as tears fill his eyes. “I can’t.” 

“Then don’t,” Laurel says. “Oliver, I would give almost anything to have just 5 more minutes with Sara, but I can’t. She’s gone and she’s not coming back.” 

Laurel starts to cry in earnest at that, and soon the both of them are standing there awkwardly on the sidewalk with tears rolling down their faces. Thankfully, only a few people pass them by and they all have the courtesy to look the other way. 

“Don’t run away just because it’s easier to ignore the pain,” Laurel says, taking a step back from him and giving him a sad smile as she wipes the tears from her eyes. “This life you chose... The life  _ Sara _ chose… It’s lonely. But it doesn’t have to be. I wish that Sara had seen that… I wish she’d have felt like she could come home again. Maybe she’d still be alive.” 

Oliver nods. It’s on the tip of his tongue to tell her about his fears, but he can’t seem to voice them.

“I should really get inside,” Laurel says.

“I could go with you,” he says, but she shakes her head. 

“That’s not going to help me, Oliver. And it’s not going to help you. I’m not the one you need and I haven’t been in a long time.” 

Oliver knows that she’s right. Laurel isn’t going to be able to help with this suffocating feeling. There’s only one person who can make any of this better, and he just prays to god that she’s going to make it through this alive. She has to. Kitty promised him that this Charles Xavier and Jean Grey would help her. He’s resting everything on these complete strangers being able to help her where he can’t. 

He can’t lose Felicity.

****

Oliver walks into the hospital thirty minutes later, feeling much like he did when he left. He’s struggling to catch his breath and stumbling on his feet, barely able to process the world around him. 

For the last thirty minutes, he’s felt the floor slipping out from under him. All day long, he’d been able to put off most of his emotions. He’d held them at bay, but the second he left Laurel, that had all come crashing down. 

Sara’s gone. She joins a list a mile long of people he’s had to learn to live without.

His father. 

Yao Fei. 

Shado. 

Slade.

Akio.

Taiana. 

Tommy. 

His mother. 

Now Sara. 

It’s not fair. He’s already lost Sara twice before. He’s had to learn to live without before and both times the guilt of losing her ate away at him. He’s been eternally thankful that each time, she’s found her way back to the land of the living. 

Not this time though. This time, she’s really gone and with her, he’s lost one of his oldest, closest friends. In Sara, he’d found somebody that could understand what he went through on the island. She knew him in a way that nobody else ever will. And with her dead now… 

He just doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do. 

He loves his friends, he does. They bring a light to his life that he never imagined he would have again. He wouldn’t trade them for the world. But they can’t give him what Sara could. They can’t understand what it was like to be an innocent kid dropped in the middle of hell. They don’t understand the importance of building up walls around your heart to keep people out. They’ve never had to suffer the pain of watching somebody they love die right in front of them as a direct result of the choices they made. They don’t live in the darkness. They’ve never let it become them. 

They’re are just some aspects of his life that his friends will never understand, and he doesn’t want them to. But Sara did. Sara understood his every move because she was just as broken as he was. 

And now, she’s gone. 

As if losing her isn’t enough to send him into a complete tailspin, his mind keeps playing tricks on him. He keeps hearing Thea’s voice calling him a monster. Telling him that she doesn’t love him anymore. Even worse, he keeps seeing flashes of Felicity’s dead body at his feet. 

It’s too much. Sara’s death? Finding out Thea is gone for good? Felicity’s condition? He’s losing three of the most important people in his life in a single day. It’s beyond cruel. No amount of sins he’s ever committed could ever warrant such a brutal punishment. 

This right here, it’s not something he’ll recover from. 

He tries to shove everything back into the carefully laid out boxes he had them in, but they won’t go fit. He can’t compartmentalize anymore, and that scares him. He feels like he’s slipping away. He’s losing himself and he isn’t sure if he’ll ever find his way back. 

He needs Felicity to set him straight like she always does. He needs her to pull him out of the darkness. To help him breathe. She always knows the right thing to say to calm him down and help him catch his breath. 

He’s drowning, struggling for air and she’s not here. 

“Oliver, woah,” Digg says, grabbing him by his shoulders and shaking him. 

“Huh?” Oliver says, looking at his friend in confusion. 

“I’ve been calling your name for the last minute,” Digg says, concerned. “Are you okay man?” 

“I need to see her,” he says, looking around in a daze. 

He’s in the lobby of the hospital. He’s not quite sure how he got here. Did he drive? Did he walk? Maybe he’d caught a cab. He can’t remember anything after he’d left Laurel. 

“You should sit down,” Digg says, pulling him towards a chair, but Oliver shakes his head. 

“I need to see her,” he repeats. 

“She’s still asleep man,” Digg says. “Just take a minute. Let’s get you calmed down.” 

“I’m going to lose her,” Oliver whispers, his eyes filling with tears. 

“You’re not going to lose her,” Digg says. “Kitty and her team—” 

“No,” Oliver cuts him off, not even trying to process his words. “I’m going to lose her.” 

“She’s not dying, Oliver.” 

“You don’t understand,” he says. “I lose everyone. I just… I can’t do this. I need to see her.” 

“Just breathe, man,” Digg says, pushing him into the chair and pressing on his back until his head is between his knees. “In and out. Slow breaths in and out.”

Oliver does his best to follow his friend’s directions. He sucks in a big breath, but then he feels like he’s choking on it. He’s going to quite literally drown in his own tears. 

“Felicity is fine,” Digg says calmly. “Kitty and her team are with her right now. They’re going to help her. You did the right thing by calling them. Just keep breathing.” 

He can hear the words but he can’t process them. They sound so far away. Like there’s a wall between the two of them. 

“Everything is going to be alright,” Digg says. 

“You can’t know that,” Oliver responds, gasping for air.

“Slow breaths man. In and out. Come on. Breath with me.” 

Oliver doesn’t know how long they sit there like that, with Oliver doing his best to match Digg’s breathing. But eventually he feels himself come back to reality. It’s brutal. 

All at once, he sits up and suddenly the lights are too bright. The noise of the baby crying on the other side of the lobby is too loud. The two boys running around pretending to shoot each other has him on edge. 

Digg hands him a bottle of water. 

“Drink this slowly,” he says.

“I’m not thirsty,” Oliver responds, but complies anyway.

The cool water on his throat surprisingly doesn’t make him feel like he’s drowning again. It’s actually fairly refreshing. 

“You had me nervous there for a minute,” Digg says with a kind smile. “Glad to see you’re coming back to yourself.”

Oliver nods, taking another sip of water, before he says, “I need to see her.”

“Okay,” Digg says with a nod. “She’s in the same room. They haven’t moved her yet. They are waiting to see if she needs to be transferred anywhere.” 

“Transferred?” he asks, feeling the panic start to return. “Why would she be transferred.”

“Calm down,” Digg says, raising his hands up. “They didn’t know what Kitty and her team were going to say. The doctors were just being safe. Nobody is taking Felicity away from us.” 

“No, they aren’t,” he says, his voice dangerous.

Without another comment, he marches through the lobby and down the hall towards her room. 

He pushes her door open and is taken back when he sees so many people in the room. Kitty had only told him she was bringing two others. There are seven people crammed into her tiny room and it’s so crowded that he can barely make out Felicity’s form through the sea of bodies. 

It sets him on edge. While the people all look normal enough — apart from the guy in the crazy sunglasses — he knows that they are all mutants. Mutants who he doesn’t know from Adam; and even though he wants to trust that Kitty wouldn’t bring anyone here that would put Felicity in danger, he can’t. These people are complete strangers. He hasn’t vetted any of them. He doesn’t know their background. He doesn’t know their abilities. He doesn’t have a plan of attack should things go south. 

While the situation would set him on edge on a normal day, after a day like he’s had, he’s starting to feel panicked again. He pushes through the crowd of people until he’s at Felicity’s bedside. He reaches out for her hand as he sits on the edge of her bed and stares down at her, trying to reassure himself that she is okay. That these people haven’t done anything to hurt her in his absence. 

‘She’s alright, Oliver,’ a man says, and he looks up around the room trying to figure out who said that so that he can tell them that nothing about Felicity being in a hospital is alright. It’s then that he notices there are actually eight people in the room. He hadn’t seen the bald man in a wheelchair in his initial scan of the room.

‘Felicity is going to be alright. Just try to breathe,’ the voice says again, and it’s then that Oliver realizes that it’s coming from the man in the wheelchair. Except… his lips aren’t moving. How is he doing that?

‘I’m Charles Xavier,’ the man says, and still, his lips don’t move. Oliver realizes that this is his power. He can project thoughts into people’s minds. 

Charles Xavier. As in Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. The school that Felicity attended when she found out she was a mutant and ran away from home. 

“Hey,” Kitty says, coming up behind him to put a gentle hand on his shoulder. 

Oliver jumps at the contact, immediately standing up in a defensive position, reading to fight. It feels like the walls are closing in on him. He scans the room looking for obvious escape routes. Looking for things that could be used as a weapon. His fingers itch for his bow as he sizes up his opponents.

‘These people are not the enemy,’ the man — Xavier — tells him, but Oliver will believe that when he sees it.

“Maybe we should give Oliver some space,” Kitty says, reaching out to squeezing his arm. Though he knows that it’s meant to be comforting, it only makes him more tense. 

“That’s probably a good idea,” Xavier says, this time voicing his words. “Would you give us the room?” 

“No,” Logan says, and when Oliver looks up to meet his gaze, he sees that he’s got three giant metal claws coming out of each hand. Felicity hadn’t been kidding when she said that Logan was practically made of steel. 

Oliver sizes him up, mentally calculating what adjustments would have to be made to his traditional moves in order to fight somebody with Logan’s abilities. He’s pretty sure he can still take him. After all, Logan seems like the kind of guy that relies too heavily on his brute strength and doesn’t have much in the way of strategy. 

“Let’s go get some air,” a pretty redhead says to Logan, putting a hand on his shoulder, and trying to get him to leave the room like everyone else is doing. Only, Logan doesn’t move. He doesn’t retract his claws. 

“I’m not leaving Current with this tool,” he says. 

Oliver glares at him, daring him to say something more. He’s been itching for a fight ever since he failed to take down Lacroix earlier today. Few things would give him greater satisfaction than punching the condescending look off of Logan’s face. 

The nerve of him, implying that Felicity is anything but safe with him. If there’s a threat to Felicity, it’s  _ them _ . 

“Come on, Logan,” the redhead says, putting her hand on his back, but he doesn’t move. “Nothing is going to happen to her with the Professor here.” 

Oliver isn’t sure what that’s supposed to mean. Do they seriously not think that he could take out an old man in a wheelchair just because he’s human? Oliver’s taken out much more powerful mutants before. This Professor wouldn’t be a challenge. 

The redhead’s words mixed with her gentle pushes eventually have Logan taking steps towards the door.

As he passes by Oliver, he grabs onto his arm and holds it tightly. Oliver refuses to show just how painful the grip is.

“You and I are going to have words later, Bub,” Logan says, before letting go and walking out the door, leaving only Kitty and Xavier left. 

“Thank you for calling us,” Kitty says, giving him a sad smile. “I promise that we’re going to help, okay. Just give us a chance.” 

Oliver doesn’t respond to that. His heart knows that he’d made the right choice in calling them. He knows that they are his only hope at saving Felicity. And damn does he need them to save Felicity for him. But his head just doesn’t seem to be getting that message. His brain keeps signaling to him that he’s in danger, and he can’t shut it off.

“I’m gonna go make sure that Logan doesn’t kill anybody,” Kitty tells him. “Are you going to be okay in here?” 

Oliver nods and Kitty leaves the room, closing the door behind her. 

It’s not until the door clicks shut and he lets out a big sigh, that he realizes he’d been holding his breath. 

“I’m sorry we had to meet under such difficult circumstances,” Xavier says, watching him carefully. Oliver gets the feeling that he can see right through him. It makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end. 

“It’s clearly been a long and stressful day and I regret that our appearance in your life has only made it worse. But Kitty is right. We are here to help,” Xavier says. 

Oliver brushes off his obvious concern. He doesn’t know him, and Oliver isn’t looking to make friends here. He just wants Felicity to get better. 

“What’s wrong with her?” he asks, turning his attention back to Felicity. 

Now that the room is empty and he no longer feels like the walls are closing in on him, he allows himself to take comfort in the steady rise and fall of her chest. He forces his own breathing to match hers. Laurel had been right. This is where he needed to be.

“Her body is shutting down,” he says.

The words cause Oliver’s heart to leap into his throat and he feels like he’s just been punched in the gut. 

“Not like that,” Xavier says quickly. “I apologize for not choosing my words more carefully. Her body is going into a state of what one could call hibernation. It’s conserving energy as her body prepares to evolve.”

“Evolve?” 

Xavier nods and doesn’t explain further, like Oliver’s supposed to know what that means. He’s not a science guy. He barely understands half of the terms Felicity throws around on a daily basis, but he certainly knows the word evolve. What he can’t understand is why it’s being used in this context. 

“What do you mean she’s preparing to evolve?” Oliver asks. 

“Felicity — Current as we call her — has near limitless potential. Her mutation is ever evolving, constantly changing and growing. At times, that change can happen faster than her body can handle and it shuts down temporarily to re-program itself.” 

“So this has happened before?” Oliver asks, angry that Felicity never mentioned this as a possibility. He would have been damn sure to pay more attention to the signs if she had. He wouldn’t have allowed her to push herself so hard. 

“No,” Xavier says, causing Oliver to send him a questioning look.

“Then how do you know—” 

“I’ve seen it in other mutants,” Xavier says. “Not many, I’ll admit. Few have abilities like Felicity’s that are constantly evolving. But I have seen it before and I can promise you that’s what’s happening now.” 

“How long will she be like this?” Oliver asks, running a hand through her hair, before placing it on her cheek. He allows the feeling of her warm body to reassure him that the man is right. Felicity isn’t going anywhere. She’s just resting up. 

“Everyone’s different,” he says. “But if I had to guess, a few days.” 

Oliver sucks in a deep breath. A few days. That’s certainly longer than he’d expected. He’d been thinking she’d need a few more hours. Maybe a day. She’d need rest once she woke up, but she’d be awake. He’d be able to talk to her. 

A few days of being unable to talk to her, of not having her support, it’s brutal. 

But at least she will wake up eventually, he reminds himself. That’s more than he can say for Sara. That’s more than he can say for Shado. For Tommy. For his parents. Or any of the other countless people who have been destroyed by his love. 

Felicity is lucky. 

“I know that you don’t know me very well,” Xavier says. “But I hope you don’t mind me saying something to you.” 

Oliver looks up at the man and he’s got a look on his face that tells Oliver even if he tries to protest, he’s going to say his piece anyway.

“This isn’t your fault,” Xavier says.

Oliver scoffs and shakes his head at that. This guy doesn’t know him. 

“No, I don’t,” Xavier says. “But I know her.”

The words cause him to feel on edge again. It’s an uncomfortable feeling, having somebody see through him. He’s completely exposed and he’s never reacted well to having people push at his carefully constructed walls. 

“If she were awake right now, she’d be telling you the same thing,” Xavier says. 

Oliver shakes his head, but the man continues to talk. 

“I know you think that you pushed her too hard and caused this to happen, but I want to make it clear to you so that you don’t destroy yourself with guilt. I’ve known this moment was coming since the day I met Felicity 9 years ago, and with or without you, this was going to happen.” 

Oliver wants to lash out. He wants to scream at the man for daring to try and tell him how he feels. He doesn’t know Oliver. He doesn’t get to pretend that he understands him or how he works. 

But there’s another part of him, the part that’s been calling out to him all day, that needed to hear those words.

“I’ll give you two some time,” Xavier says, exiting the room and leaving Oliver alone with his thoughts. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks as always for your continued support of this series! Your comments mean the world!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So sorry for the long delay between updates. I never intended this one to take so long, but apparently between real life getting in the way and the heavy material this installment of the series deals with, things just got away from me. Most of the next chapter is already written if that makes anyone feel any better? 
> 
> Special thanks for Mel and Megan for seeing this chapter through all of the many edits it took.

Oliver paces in front of the door to Felicity’s room trying his best not to treat every tick of the clock as a personal affront. It’s been two days since Kitty and the rest of the X-Men showed up and still, Felicity isn’t awake. 

Felicity isn’t awake. 

Thea is still pretending she’s in Europe. 

And Sara’s killer is running free after discovering Lacroix had nothing to do with her death. 

It’s been two days of Oliver being unable to do anything to help solve the problems he’s created and he’s about had it. The fact that he hasn’t lost his mind already is a miracle. The lid on his temper is paper thin and he just knows if so much as another minute passes without some kind of progress  _ somewhere _ , he’s going to lose it.

Kitty must sense this, because she’s been babysitting him for the last several hours and has made it her mission in life to make sure that Logan and him are never in the same room together because the two of them have been one massive brawl waiting to happen ever since the first night the X-Men showed up at the hospital. 

Logan blames him for what’s happened to Felicity, and while Oliver doesn’t disagree with him, he doesn’t appreciate the constant insinuations that Oliver doesn’t care about Felicity. All Oliver needs is ten minutes alone in a room with Logan and he’ll be able to work off all his excess anger at being unable to do anything to help any of the women in his life.

Thus, why Kitty has become his babysitter. Thus, why Oliver is pacing outside of Felicity’s room rather than sitting at her bedside where he’d rather be. Sitting next to Felicity — reassuring himself that she’s still alive by the steady beep of the heart rate monitors — It’s the only place he can breathe. 

“Why aren’t you people doing anything?” he says to Kitty.

“There’s nothing to be done but wait,” Kitty tells him, ignoring the way he’s currently glaring at her.

“I thought you came here to help her!” he yells. 

There’s something satisfying about directing his rage at her. Even when he knows it’s entirely unfair, it gives him a break from the suffocating guilt over the fact that the real reason Felicity is in a coma is because he messed up. He was so consumed with finding Sara’s killer that he hadn’t stopped to think. He’d been the one to tell Felicity to do whatever it took, and she had. 

For him.

Felicity is in a coma because of him. He still can't wrap his mind around that and he's positive that he's never going to feel anything but guilt over it. His beautiful, smart, talented Felicity had nearly gotten herself killed because he'd asked. It's not right. It's unacceptable. 

It's downright terrifying to know that she’s willing to put herself in harm’s way for him. He's not worth it.

And yet, here they are. Because he’d asked. Even knowing that she'd do just about anything he told her to do if it meant helping another person, he'd asked. He's such an asshole. 

So yes, for a second, it’s easier to direct his rage at Kitty because it gives him a moment's reprieve from having to direct that rage at himself. Yelling at her gives him something to do that isn’t drowning in guilt. All he’s been doing over the last few days is drowning. Drowning, worrying, and sitting. 

Oliver’s never been one to sit and wait. 

He’s a doer. He likes to take action. Except he can’t. Without a lead on Sara’s killer, there’s nobody to put an arrow in. Without any information on where Thea could be, he can’t bring her back home. And Felicity… 

He can’t do anything to help her wake up any sooner. 

At least, that’s what the all knowing Xavier has told him. 

Oliver is tempted to put an arrow in  _ him _ and his condescending, smug face but Kitty has informed him that even attempting to do so would be entirely pointless. Apparently Xavier can control Oliver’s movements if he wanted to. Which has done nothing to make Oliver any more comfortable around mutants. 

No man should have that much power. It’s not natural and it puts him on edge. 

Yet another reason Kitty had brought him out here. Apparently Logan, Xavier, and some of the other mutants had wanted time with Felicity. 

If Felicity is really going to be as fine as everyone keeps telling him, then why are they still here looking so worried? 

It’s total bullshit and he knows there’s something they aren’t telling him, which only makes him more anxious. 

He doesn’t know how to do this without Felicity at his side and he doesn’t know what he’ll do if she doesn’t come back to him.

Does he even know how to live in a world in which the three women who know him best aren’t in it? Does he even want to? 

“She’ll be fine,” Kitty says to him and hearing that phrase for the millionth time makes him snap. 

“If I’d have known all you people were going to do was sit at her bedside, I wouldn’t have called,” he yells. “I could have done that!” 

“Except you didn’t,” a gruff voice says behind him. 

Oliver turns around to see Logan stepping out of Felicity’s room, his fists clenched but his claws aren’t out. Not yet at least. Oliver wonders how far he’d have to push him before he’d bring those out to play. 

He’s tempted to find out. He’s been itching for a good fight for days. 

“Excuse me?” Oliver says, his own fists clenching, eying Logan up and calculating just how hard he’ll have to hit him to knock him out. 

“You  _ didn’t _ sit at her bedside,” Logan says. “You weren’t there at all. The only reason you’re here now is because you don’t want to look bad in front of us. When it really mattered, when she was here all alone and you didn’t know if she’d be okay, you left. Real standup guy you turned out to be.”

Oliver’s shoulders tense as his words hit hard. Oliver might feel guilty for leaving Felicity in order to go after Lacroix, but he’s not about to admit that to Logan of all people.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Oliver says with a glare. Logan doesn’t get to talk to him as if he doesn’t care about Felicity. He has no idea what Oliver is dealing with right now. 

He’s not just trying to manage the fact that the woman he’s in love with is in a coma because of a mistake he made… because that would be bad enough. He’s also trying to reconcile the fact that his little sister ran away from home because she doesn’t want anything to do with this town and its lies anymore. Lies that he’s helped tell her. And if that weren’t enough, he’s lost Sara. The only woman who had any chance of understanding the hell that Oliver has been through in his life is gone and he’d been unable to save her. She’d been killed in his own city  — a city he’d vowed to protect. 

A hell of a hero he’s turned out to be… can’t even save the people closest to him and the city is still full of monsters. 

What was the point of any of it if?

“You don’t know anything,” Oliver says, burying his own guilt and self-doubt down deep enough that Logan won’t be able to see.

“I know that Current is in bed because she over-exerted herself so much that she triggered her own evolution,” Logan says, the words coming out more animalistic than human. “I know that she knows her own limits and doesn’t test them—” 

Oliver can’t help but snort at that because Felicity may know her own limits, but she tests them all of the time. As much as that fact pisses Oliver off, Felicity is selfless. She’ll push herself to the limit if it means helping somebody she cares about. Logan really doesn’t know her at all. 

Cleary Oliver’s snort only serves to enrage Logan, because the claws come out. 

Perfect. Oliver can’t wait to put one of these arrogant assholes in their place. 

“Do you even care about her?” Logan growls. “As she lies in a hospital bed after, no doubt, trying to prove her worth for you, do you even care? Or is she just another notch on the belt for you?” 

“Screw you,” Oliver says, moving towards Logan. 

He’ll go for the head first. No use beating around the bush. He won’t get more than a shot or two in before Logan retaliates and he’s going to have to be extra careful not to let Logan get his claws into him. He’ll feign right then go left. It’s his weaker side, but he’s sure that Logan will expect him to come at him from the right. 

Oliver pulls back his arm for a hit, but is surprised when a heavy weight pulls him back. 

“Logan, stop,” Kitty says, as she pulls at Oliver’s arm. Oliver quickly shoves her off of him. He doesn’t need a bodyguard. He can handle this asshole himself.

“Is that how you treat all of your women?” Logan asks. “Push them around? Is that what happened to your last girl? What was her name? Sara?” 

Oliver lands a punch square in the face, but it’s like hitting a brick wall. 

The bastard really is made of steel. He steps back for a moment, needing to re-strategize and Logan smiles down at him with the most satisfied look on his face. 

“I promised my girl in there that I wouldn’t start anything,” Logan says. “But seeing as you hit me first.” 

Oliver just barely has enough time to jump out of the way as a claw comes at him. 

“We’re in a hospital!” Kitty yells, but they both ignore her. 

Oliver takes another swing at Logan. His fist has just collided with his eye when suddenly he cannot move. 

There’s a handful of seconds in which Oliver is genuinely confused before Logan speaks up and things become clear. 

“Let us go, Professor,” Logan says. 

“Enough,” Xavier says, rolling to the door to fix both of them with a scathing look. “If you’re going to behave like animals, you aren’t going to do it here.” 

The next thing Oliver knows, the hold on them has been released and his fist is once again pounding into Logan’s eye. He pulls back only to notice that the bright lights of the hospital are gone and have been replaced with the darkness of an empty warehouse. 

“What the hell?” Oliver says, wondering how they got here. 

There’s no time to process, however, because there is a giant metal claw coming at him. He jumps backwards, but the ends of the claw catch on his stomach, and it’s only then that he realizes that he’s no longer in his henley and jeans. He’s wearing his suit.

He tightens his grip on the bow that has mysteriously appeared in his hand and sends up a prayer of relief. If he’s going to take Logan down, he can use all of the help he can get. 

Oliver quickly pulls an arrow from his quiver and fires it at Logan, testing his reflexes. Logan slices through the arrow with his claw before it can reach it’s mark. 

Oliver is going to have to be a lot quicker if he wants to land any hits on Logan. 

Logan runs at him with an animalistic growl. Before Oliver can move out of the way, Logan catches him around the middle and he’s stumbling backwards until he hits a pillar. Logan retracts his claws and instantly begins pummeling Oliver.  

Oliver tries not to let it show how much Logan’s punches hurt as they land on his face, his sides, and on his already injured stomach, but they do. The man is made of indestructible metal, of course it hurts. 

Oliver reaches down to the holster at his thigh and pulls out his tranquilizer flechette and jams it into Logan’s neck. The man stumbles backwards and releases his grip.

Logan pulls the flechette out of his neck and the wound quickly closes up. 

“It’s gonna take a lot more than that to bring me down,” Logan tells him before his claws come back out. 

Oliver ducks as Logan’s claw comes at him and goes right through the pillar. He rolls out of the way, getting far enough away that the claws can no longer reach him. He can still feel where he’d been stabbed in the stomach, and it hurts enough for Oliver to know he doesn’t want that to happen again. 

Once he’s far enough away, he quickly shoots five arrows at Logan while continuing to move around him in a circle. Logan slices through each one like they are nothing, but Oliver had expected that. He activates the explosive arrow as he grabs it from his quiver and shoots it. The second Logan’s claws slice through the arrow, it detonates, sending them both flying backwards from the explosion.

Oliver finds his way to his feet quickly, bow drawn, as he waits for the smoke to clear to see if Logan made it through or not. Oliver is unharmed, but he’d been much farther away from the explosion than Logan had. 

When the smoke fades away and Logan is standing in front of him, his skin charred but quickly healing, Oliver can’t help but let out a groan of annoyance. 

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he says. 

Logan doesn’t say anything, instead he takes Oliver by the neck and slams him into the ground before Oliver can stop him. He’s about to punch Oliver in the face when he sways slightly, signaling that the tranquilizer is finally making it’s way through his veins. 

Oliver takes advantage of his momentary weakness, unsure how long the tranq will work on the man seeing as he’s never tested it on a mutant before. He needs to make every moment count if he’s going to win this fight.

He uses a move Slade taught him years ago to get Logan onto his back and uses his legs to pin his arms down the best he can. Then he begins hitting him as hard as he can as often as he can. While his fingers feel like they may break as they hit Logan’s hard skull, he doesn’t stop. He can’t stop. Fighting a mutant like Logan makes Slade Wilson look like a common street thug. 

Unfortunately, even with the tranquilizer, there’s only so long that Oliver can hold Logan down. Logan’s right arm gets free and before Oliver can move out of the way, Logan stabs him through his chest.

Oliver instantly begins choking on his own blood as he looks down in horror. Logan looks at him in surprise, like he hadn't expected things to get this far. 

Then, the room spins around them, and Oliver expects to pass out from the pain, positive death is imminent. But unless he’s ended up in some awful level of hell in which he’s stuck at the hospital with the X-Men, he hasn't died. 

“Logan,” Xavier says using the harshest tone Oliver’s ever heard from the man. “If that had been real, you would have killed Oliver.”

Several of the people surrounding them gasp, and Oliver looks around, noticing that all of the X-Men are staring at them like some kind of zoo exhibit. Though his heart is still racing, he no longer feels pain. He looks down at his chest to see that his wounds are gone. He hadn't been stabbed. 

His eyes go to Xavier, confused about what just happened. His fight with Logan had felt real enough, but there isn't a mark on him. 

‘It was just an illusion,’ Xavier informs him using that creepy mind thing he does. He taps his temple before smiling at him. Like because it hadn't been real, suddenly it's okay. There's nothing okay about what just happened though. Logan stabbed him through the chest. 

They had been fighting and Oliver had lost. He'd been hit with a fatal blow. It was all of his nightmares come true. As much as the team likes to joke that he has nine lives, he is very much a mortal, and his time will come. Sooner rather than later if he keeps up this lifestyle. Just look at what happened to Sara. 

Fuck.

Logan had stabbed him through the chest. Had Logan  _ known  _ it wasn't real, or had he truly intended on killing him?

“You tried to kill Oliver? What were you thinking?” One of the women asks — the redhead — Jean? 

“He didn't try,” Oliver says, seething with rage and unbridled fear. His fists clench up, contemplating if he thinks he could take Logan in a second round. “You stabbed me through the chest. You fucking asshole—”

“Oh like I'm the problem here—” Logan says, speaking over him. 

“Stop it,” Xavier says sharply, and though Oliver doesn't take orders from them, he figures he should probably listen to the man who has the power to make him live his own death scene. 

“Is this what you think Felicity would want?” Xavier asks them both. “She cares for each of you deeply and is going to need you both when she wakes up.”

Oliver sucks in a breath as he thinks about Felicity waking up to realize he'd been killed. She'd be devastated. 

God, is that really how a fight between Logan and himself would really go? Surely Oliver would find some way to defeat him in a real battle, right? 

Then again, maybe not. He's a mortal living in a world of superheroes. What did he expect?

“Tell me, do either of you honestly feel better after that?” Xavier asks. 

Oliver looks down at the ground, knowing the answer is no. He'd been thinking if he could just hit something enough times… If he could just  _ do  _ something, he'd feel better, but he only feels worse. 

“Be the men Felicity believes you to be,” Xavier says, really playing up the guilt trip, as if Oliver needs any help in that department. He then wheels himself away from them. The rest of the mutants give him a tentative look before following Xavier, leaving only Logan and Kitty.

They all stand there in awkward silence for several long minutes. Oliver knows that the proper thing to do would be to apologize and tell Logan that it wasn’t really about him, that the person Oliver was really mad at was himself. However, now that Logan has killed him, weird hallucination or not, Oliver actually is angry with Logan and he sure as hell isn’t going to apologize to him now. Not until he apologizes first. Possibly not ever. 

“Logan,” Kitty hisses, clearly trying to coax an apology out of the man. 

“Hurt her and I’ll kill you for real,” Logan says, before storming off. 

He doesn't understand how in Earth Felicity managed to become friends with a man like Logan. 

“Is he always such a grumpy, arrogant asshole who can't even bring himself to mutter the words ‘I'm sorry’ even when he's clearly in the wrong?” Oliver mutters, crossing his arms.

Kitty gives him a knowing look and it's obvious that she wants to say something to him. 

“What?” he snaps at her. 

She shakes her head in amusement before the smile slips from her face and she becomes serious once more. 

“I’m sorry,” Kitty apologizes on Logan’s behalf. 

“That your best friend tried to kill me?” Oliver says sarcastically, glaring at her. “He can apologize himself.” 

“He can’t separate you from Cooper,” Kitty says. “He watched Felicity go through everything she went through with Cooper and no matter what he did, he couldn’t stop her. He’s worried that it’s happening all over again.” 

He knows that she's just standing up for her friend and trying to help Oliver see where Logan is coming from, but he doesn't care. He’s sick of dealing with the mutants. He's got enough going on without the constant fear of when they will use their powers against him. 

“I would never hurt her,” Oliver says defensively, before realizing what a lie that is. He already has hurt her, numerous times. He’s the reason she’s in the hospital right now. 

“I would never intentionally hurt her,” he says, this time the words ringing more truthful. He loves Felicity and would never mean to hurt her. Not if it were within his control. 

“He’ll come around eventually,” Kitty tells him.

Oliver scoffs at that. “He doesn’t have to come around,” he says. “He’s not the one I’m in a relationship with. I don’t need his approval.” 

Kitty holds up her hands in surrender. “You're right. I’m sorry. I guess I just assumed you’d care if Felicity’s friends liked you or not.” 

“Well I don’t,” Oliver says, roughly, still feeling on edge from everything that’s just happened.

“Right,” Kitty says sadly and starts to walk away. She’s almost to the end of the hallway before she turns back to him. “Felicity is a mutant. So if you’re going to be part of her life. This? Us? It’s part of the package. So sooner or later you’re going to need to learn to stop being so afraid of mutants.” 

Oliver dismisses her comment with a shake of his head. If they wanted to make sure that he wasn’t afraid of them, then the professor shouldn’t have done that mind whammy on them and Logan shouldn’t have killed him. 

He turns his back on Kitty and slips into Felicity’s now empty room. He stands at the doorway and just takes her in. She looks so peaceful laying there. If it weren't for the breathing mask and the machines attached to her, steadily beeping to let them know her heart is still beating, he would think she was just resting. 

“You need to wake up,” he tells her, his voice sounding weak to his own ears. The fight with Logan has deeply unsettled him. His hands are trembling as his heart continues to race, even though the immediate threat is past. 

He walks over to her bedside, feeling the heavy armor he wears for the world slip away with each step. His confidence is shaken and Felicity isn't awake to help build it back up. 

“Please wake up,” he whispers. 

Needing her to feel grounded, he leans over to place a kiss to her forehead, hoping that the contact will help still his beating heart. The second his lips touch her skin, he feels a sudden light spark at the contact. 

“Felicity?” he pulls back to look at her face, searching for any sign that she’s waking up, but doesn’t see any. Her eyes remain closed, her body still, and her heart's still beating that same, slow pace. 

Oliver reaches out to take her hand, smiling at the spark of electricity that occurs at the contact. Clearly his girl knows how much he needs her right now and is trying to send him a message.

“Static electricity,” he answers for her, thinking back to all of the times she’d given him that excuse before he knew what those little sparks really were. 

Oliver takes a deep breath and lets the worries and anxieties wash away temporarily with the knowledge that she's starting to come back to him. If she's sparking again, it means her powers are awakening and she won't be far behind.

He sits down in the chair next to her bed and settles in for the night.

“I’m right here,” Oliver tells her. “I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be here when you wake up.” 

****

The next morning, Oliver is sitting alone in Felicity’s hospital room texting back and forth with Digg who is currently attempting to sort through everything Felicity had been tracking before her accident in the hopes of finding a lead on Sara’s killer. 

The X-Men had left sometime last night with promises to be back later on today. There was something about a missing girl a few towns over that they needed to check out, and Kitty told him that Logan desperately needed to get out and do something in order to blow off some steam. Oliver hadn't asked too many questions, he was just glad to see them leaving. Having them out of the building has helped him feel less on edge. 

Oliver has just sent a text to Digg, telling him to get Roy to help him sort through everything, when he hears Felicity groan. He looks up to see her head move to the side. His heart leaps with joy at the fact that she’s finally waking up. 

“Felicity,” he says, squeezing her hand, hoping she’ll squeeze back, but she doesn’t. “Hey, it’s Oliver. Wake up.” 

Felicity doesn’t move again or make a sound, making him start to doubt if he’d really heard her in the first place. But she’s been laying here unmoving for long enough, that Oliver can say, without a doubt, that she’s at least moved. Her head isn’t in the same position it was before.  

He presses the call button and waits for the nurse to come in and check on them. 

“Is everything alright, Mr. Queen?” the nurse asks. 

“She moved,” Oliver says. “I think she’s waking up. What do we do?” 

“Unfortunately, it’s not like the movies,” the nurse says, placing a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. “It may take her a few hours to really come to, and even then, she might be out of it for awhile.”

“Isn’t there something we can do to… speed the process along?” he asks, watching as the nurse checks her vitals again, shining a light in her eyes to check her responses. 

“You can try talking to her,” the nurse says. “Patients have said that hearing the voice of a loved one sometimes helps.” 

Oliver nods and the nurse walks back out of the room, leaving him alone one more. 

“Talk,” Oliver says awkwardly. “Clearly she doesn’t know me well. You’re the talker, not me.” 

He laughs, uncomfortable and not knowing what to say to her. But if there’s even a chance that hearing his voice can help bring her back, he’ll try it. 

“Digg’s at your place working through the leads on Sara’s killer,” he tells her. “Though we’re having a rough time without you…” 

He pauses, realizing he’s going about this the wrong way. The last thing Felicity needs to hear is more about Sara when the very reason she’s in this bed is because he’d pushed her too far trying to find Sara’s killer. 

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be talking about that. That’s what got us into this whole mess in the first place. God. I never meant for you to do this…” 

He pauses to take a breath, feeling the guilt that’s been a permanent fixture since her hospitalization press down, making it hard to breathe. 

A few harmless bolts of electricity shoot from her hand to his, but it’s enough to shock him out of his growing anxiety and ground him. Even in a coma, she's still taking care of him. 

He doesn’t know what on Earth he ever did to deserve Felicity. She’s a million times better than he’ll ever be.

“If the situation was reversed, you would know just the right thing to say to bring me back,” Oliver tells her, his eyes filling with tears. “I’ve never been good at this part… Just ask Laurel. Or really any of the girls I’ve dated. They’ll tell you I’m really good at charming my way into a date, but after that… I don’t know the right thing to say to make this better. I just want you to be better. I  _ need _ you to be better.” 

Oliver looks around the room nervously, waiting for somebody to jump out of the corner and laugh at him for being utterly incompetent at helping the woman he’s in love with. He just didn’t grow up with any kind of example of how to do this. His mother and father were never overly loving with each other. His parents never spent a great deal of time talking about their emotions with him. Somehow, being part of high society, equated needing to be emotionally distant for fear that the neighbors would talk.

A lot of good that’s done him. 

Oliver pulls his chair closer to the bed so that he can lean over and his face is right next to her ear. He feels less self-conscious this way. If he’s whispering all of this, it somehow makes it less awkward, in his mind. There’s less fear of anyone overhearing him… and even if Felicity does hear him and think he’s an idiot, she’s hardly in a position to laugh at him right now. 

“I don’t know how to do this without you,” Oliver whispers as tears fall from his eyes against his will. He just prays nobody walks in and sees him like this. The nurse, he could probably deal with, but he’d be mortified if Logan ever saw him like this. 

He glances around the room one more time to make sure that nobody has come in. Satisfied that they are alone and that Kitty promised to text him when they were on their way back, he leans back in and rests his head against her pillow. 

It takes him several minutes to feel secure enough to continue talking, and when he does, he’s not sure if he’s being loud enough for even Felicity to hear. He’s not even sure if he wants her to hear him.

Mostly, he just has so many thoughts that he’s struggling to sort through and a part of him thinks that maybe, saying them out loud will help. 

At least, isn’t that what people say? 

“I feel like I’m suffocating under the hood,” he whispers. “It used to give me purpose, but after seeing Sara dead, then yesterday when Logan…”

He trails off, figuring that Felicity doesn't need to know that Logan killed him, mind game or not. 

“I’m just terrified that I’m going to be next… I don’t want to die.” 

Oliver takes a deep breath, trying to reign in his tears. “And with Thea gone and you in the hospital… I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I’m that boy on the island who didn’t know how to throw a punch as people were shooting at me.” 

He wipes at his eyes and tries to pull himself together, but now that he’s started talking, it’s like a dam has burst open and he can’t stop the words from coming out. 

“I don’t want to do it anymore,” he admits, shocking himself with his confession. He’s never considered quitting before. Not honestly. Even when there have been moments of doubt, he’s never given up. The city depends on him too much to quit. He can’t hang up the hood. Who would look after the city? 

Felicity’s fingers tighten around his own, but she doesn’t stir. She doesn’t wake. 

“I need you to tell me what to do,” he says. In that moment, he’s not the island scarred man who instills fear in the worst of the city’s criminals. He’s a scared boy that doesn’t know how to play hero anymore. He’s not even sure he wants to try...

His eyes fall shut and he allows himself a moment of rest. He lets himself finally succumb to the stress of the last several days and attempts to rest, praying that his nightmares stay at bay long enough for him to at least get a solid hour in. It would be more than he’s been able to get since he found out Sara was dead. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So a much quicker update this time around to make up for the super long hiatus last time ;) Enjoy!

Oliver sits at Felicity’s bedside watching the news silently with minimal interest. Instead, his focus is on how real those metal claws had felt as they were ripping through his chest. His mind is replaying the trauma of drowning on his own blood as he struggled for air.

It’s not the first time he’s had to confront his mortality head on, but it is the first time he hasn’t come out the other side wondering if he wouldn’t be better off dead. It’s the first time there wasn’t a sliver of a moment where he was grateful that the pain was over. 

He’s feared death before, but he’s always been secretly fascinated by it. Drawn to the peace it could bring him. 

This time, there hadn’t been that resolve to welcome death. This time he’d just been terrified. 

He lets out a shuddering breath and tries to push that fear down deep, but it’s not as easy as it once was. It’s not as easy to ignore his feelings as it has been before. He’s survived by keeping his emotions in careful boxes that he rarely takes out. It’s what’s gotten him this far without losing his mind, but somehow he’s lost that control. Which only makes things worse, because losing control is a surefire way to get himself killed. 

He has no business being out there if he can’t get a handle on his emotions. 

“Ol-ver,” Felicity mumbles breathless and he’s surprised when he turns his head to see her eyes slowly opening and her hands pushing the oxygen mask out of the way.

“Hey,” he says, intensely relieved to see her awake. “You’re awake.” 

He smiles down at her and runs a hand through her hair, treasuring every single shock she gives him because it’s a sign that she’s really here with him. 

“Wha?” she tries to question but with the way she’s still struggling to catch her breath, she can’t get it out. Her eyes travel around the room, confused. 

“You’re in the hospital,” he says. 

Instantly, she moves to sit up, but he gently pushes her back down to the bed and puts the oxygen mask back over her face, holding it in place so she can’t push it out of the way again. Her eyes meet his in a panic. 

“You’re okay,” he tells her. “You overexerted yourself and passed out. Roy brought you here.” 

She shakes her head, looking terrified as she tries to push his hands away but she’s too weak. 

“You’re safe here,” he says, hating how scared she looks. “I promise you, nothing is going to harm you. Not while I’m around.” 

She settles down at that, her body going lax as all of the energy leaves her body. Her blinks get longer and longer and he knows that she’s fighting sleep. 

“Get some rest,” he says, running his hand down her face, unable to stop himself from touching her.

Her eyes travel around the room anxiously and he knows that she’s worried about being in a hospital where anyone could expose her as a mutant. 

“The doctors already know that you’re a mutant and they aren’t going to turn you in,” Oliver tells her gently. She doesn’t look reassured until he adds, “Xavier read their minds and promised me that everyone here can be trusted.” 

That seems to calm her fears and with that, she closes her eyes and falls back asleep, but not before reaching out her hand for him. He takes it and gives her a comforting squeeze, his heart feeling lighter now that he’s gotten to talk to her. 

She’s okay. 

Felicity is going to be okay. 

****

Oliver doesn’t let go of her hand for the rest of the night, which gives him plenty of time to notice the small things, like the fact that her mint green nail polish is chipped. Oliver has always been one to notice every detail. It’s part of the training he’d done with Waller. So he knows that Felicity never has chipped nail polish. On the few occasions it chips when she’s unable to immediately fix it, it bothers her. She’ll pick at it, rub at it, and stare at it, until she’s able to fix it.

So he knows that when she wakes up and sees how chipped her nails are, she’s going to fixate on it. She needs to be relaxed in order to heal and she won’t relax as long as she’s worried about her nails. Which is what prompts him to ask the nurse for nail polish.

“I’m sorry?” Corrine, the nurse, asks, giving him a confused look.

“Do you have any nail polish?” he asks, holding up Felicity’s hand as if that will be explanation enough for her to know that Felicity can’t wake up to chipped nail polish. 

And it seems to be, if the way she’s smiling at him knowingly is any indication. Either that, or she’s dealt with enough worried and bored significant others that she’s used to weird requests. 

“I don’t, but I’m sure one of the nurses around here does,” she says. “I’ll find you some.” 

He nods his thanks and watches as she checks over Felicity’s vitals. 

“How’s she doing?” Oliver asks. 

“She’s doing well,” Corrine tells him. “Has she woken up any more?”

He nods. “Two more times, but never for longer than a minute.” 

“And she seems like herself?” she asks as she makes a note on Felicity’s chart. 

“She knows her name and everything, if that’s what you’re asking?” 

He knows that there was talk early on about how slow her heart was beating and what prolonged decreased oxygen might do to her brain, but they’d put her on oxygen and Xavier hadn’t said anything before about any risks, so he hadn’t realized that may still be an issue. 

“That’s good,” Corrine says, smiling at him, but he must look scared, because she places a comforting hand on his shoulder. “If she hasn’t said or done anything to make you worry, then don’t. I’m sure she’s fine.” 

He nods his head, trying to let her words comfort him rather than allow another worry to add to his already full plate. 

“Why don’t I go and find you that nail polish?” she asks. “I’m sure you’ll feel better once you’re doing something.” 

He nods his head again, too choked up with fear to say anything to her. She gives his shoulder one last squeeze before heading out of the room. 

“Please be okay,” he whispers. 

Oliver sits back down in the chair next to her bed and reaches out to run a hand through her hair and then delicately down her face. He watches as the tiniest of blue marks appear on her face and chase after his fingers, transfixed by the light it creates. 

“Please be okay,” he repeats, not wanting to think of what he’ll do if Felicity has lingering damage due to this coma. 

****

“Black, maroon, or baby blue?” Corrine asks him, walking into the room for Felicity’s next check up. She’s holding out nail polish for him in three different colors. 

“Well she only wears maroon when she’s going somewhere formal,” he says. “I think that she thinks it’s more professional. And she really wouldn’t wear black. So blue.” 

He takes the bottle from Corrine who then digs in her pocket to hand him a bottle of nail polish remover and cotton swabs. 

“You know her pretty well,” Corrine comments. “How long have you two been together?” 

Oliver shakes his head. 

“Not long enough,” he says. “I’ve been in love with her for over a year, but I never told her. We only just went on our first date last week.” 

He stares at Felicity and starts to think of all of the time that he’s wasted, convinced that they could never be together. 

“I shouldn’t have waited so long.” 

“Well no reason to brood about it,” Corrine says. “I’m sure that it’s nothing some good old fashioned chocolate, flowers, and Italian can’t fix. You’ve still got plenty of time to make it up to her.” 

“Yeah,” he agrees half-heartedly. Because time isn’t something that he has in his favor. Not as long as he’s still living under the hood. 

“Do you know how to use that?” Corrine asks him once she’s done checking Felicity over and updating her chart. 

“What?” he asks. 

She points to the nail polish bottle that he’s awkwardly holding in his hand. 

“Do you know how to use that?” she asks again. 

“I’ve got a sister,” he tells her. It’s been years since he’s pained Thea’s nails, but he assumes that painting with this nail polish has to be easier than using that cheap Barbie nail polish on Thea’s tiny fingers. 

Corrine gives him one last smile before leaving the room to check on her other patients. 

Oliver turns back to Felicity and sighs. He makes a promise to himself that he’s going to do right by her this time around. He’s not going to push her around with lines about how he can’t be with somebody he could really care about. He’s not going to waste time worrying over if he’s good enough for her or not. He’ll respect her decision to be with him and do everything in his power to make sure that she knows how much he loves her. 

Maybe if he holds her tight enough, it’ll erase how scared he is to leave this world. 

He places the bottles on the table by her bed and pours some nail polish remover on the cotton swab, settling into his task, happy to have something useful to do. 

****

“What are you doing?” she whispers, just barely audible. 

He looks up from where he’s currently putting a second coat of nail polish on her left hand to smile at her. 

“Hey, you,” he says with a smile. “I hope you like blue.” 

He holds up her hand to show her his work. He has to say, he’s pretty proud of himself. He’s managed to keep almost all of the paint on her nails rather than her fingers. Corrine assures him that the mess he made of her ring finger when the nurse had come in and startled him will be easy to fix. 

“Are we in the hospital?” she asks him. 

It’s the same question she always asks when she wakes up. He’s pretty sure that she doesn’t have any memories of the previous times that she’s woken up, but he’s been told that’s normal. 

“You’re in the hospital, but it’s okay,” he tells her. “Nobody here is going to hurt you, Xavier already checked them out.” 

“You called the Professor?” she asks, settling back into her bed as her eyes are starting to fall shut again.

“I called Kitty. Kitty called Xavier,” he tells her, trying to keep the disdain out of his voice. She doesn’t need to worry about his problems with her friends right now. The only thing she needs to focus on is building her strength up so that he can take her home. 

“Okay,” she mumbles, already half asleep again. “Just don’t tell Logan I’m here. He doesn’t do well with hospitals.” 

Oliver watches her until he’s sure that she’s asleep again then turns back to her nails, trying to process what she’s just told him. He wonders what Logan’s problem with hospitals are, before realizing that he doesn’t care. He’s not going to concern himself with the asshole that, for all intents and purposes, killed him. 

****

Oliver hears a knock at the door a few hours later and looks up, surprised to see Laurel stepping into the room. 

“Hey?” he says, more of a question then a greeting. “Sorry, I don’t have any more news on Sara—”

“I know,” Laurel says with a sad smile. She looks like she’s been crying, but then, that’s not a surprise given how her sister died. “I ran into Digg on my way in. He said he’s heading to Felicity’s to see if he can find any leads.” 

Oliver nods, because he’s just finished talking to Digg about what their next move is. Without any lead on Sara, the trail is running cold. Their only option is to continue to comb through all of Felicity’s research and hope they can find something useful. 

“How’s she doing?” Laurel asks, and he recognizes it for the olive branch that it is. 

“She’s starting to wake up,” he says. “Never for very long, but the doctor says it’s a good sign.”

“That’s good,” she says, shuffling back and forth on her feet and playing with her hands. He knows her well enough to know that she doesn’t want to be talking about Felicity right now. She has something she wants to tell him but is putting it off. 

“What’s going on?” he asks, bracing himself for bad news. Given everything that’s happened recently, he can’t imagine that it’s anything but another problem he’s going to have to manage. 

“I told my dad,” she says, her eyes instantly filling with tears. 

Oliver hadn’t expected that. He pushes his chair away as he stands up and goes to her, pulling her into a hug that she clearly needs. She wraps her arms around him as she begins sobbing into his chest.

He doesn’t mention how he can smell the gin on her. It’s clearly not the time, but it’s enough for him to know that her father hadn’t taken the news well. How could he? His daughter was murdered. 

“It’s okay,” Oliver says, knowing that it’s anything but. “He deserved to know.” 

“He was so mad at me,” she cries as he pats her on the back, unsure of what else he can do to comfort her. 

He’s not surprised to hear that Lance was angry. He would be too if somebody he loved kept the death of his daughter from him. He’d known this was an option when Laurel said she didn’t want to tell her father, but that doesn’t mean that he’s happy to be proved right. 

“He’ll come around,” he tells her. “He’s just hurting.” 

“What if he never forgives me, Ollie?” she says, pulling back from his arms to wipe at her eyes, and he winces when he sees just how drunk she looks. He’s not sure how he missed it before. “What if he’s angry forever. I can’t lose my father, too. I just lost my sister.”

“You won’t lose him forever,” he says, shaking his head. Lance might be upset right now, but he loves his children fiercely. No matter what problems Oliver has had with the man in the past, that fact had always been clear. “He’ll come around. He loves you too much to be angry forever.” 

“You didn’t see him,” Laurel says, shaking her head. 

Oliver bites his tongue, knowing that anything he says right now won’t be heard. She’s determined to be upset. He can try talking to her again when she’s sober. 

“Why don’t you sit down. Let me go get you a coffee or something,” he tells her. 

“I don’t want a coffee,” she says. 

“Well I’m not letting you leave here so that you can go get another drink,” he says, grabbing her wrist as she starts to dig in her purse for her keys. 

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Laurel says. “Do you have any idea what I’m going through right now?” 

“Yes,” he says, grabbing onto her shoulders and forcing her to meet his eyes. “More than probably anyone, I understand what you’re feeling right now. Which is why I’m not judging you for falling off of the wagon. But I can’t let you continue to throw your life away after you’ve fought so hard to get better. That’s not what Sara would want.” 

“No, Sara would want to be alive,” Laurel says. 

Oliver sighs deeply, letting go of her shoulders when she pulls away from him. 

“At least let me call somebody to come and get you so you aren’t driving,” he says, knowing that there’s no chance in hell he’ll convince her to stay. 

“There’s nobody to call,” she says sadly. 

He moves to follow her as she leaves, knowing that he can’t let her get into a car when she’s like this. She’ll get herself or somebody else killed. 

“I’ll take a cab,” she tells him. “Don’t follow me.” 

“Laurel,” he calls after her, and thankfully she turns around to look at him again. 

“I’m sorry Ollie, I just can’t be around you right now,” she says. “I thought I could. I thought it might make me feel better but it doesn’t.” 

He nods his understanding, because he gets that. They aren’t those kids they used to be anymore. They don’t need each other like the used to. He’s not sure they ever did. He sure as hell was never a good friend to her. He certainly wasn’t a good boyfriend. 

“At least promise me you’ll go to a meeting,” he says. 

She takes a deep breath and all of the fight leaves her body as she nods at him in agreement. 

“I will,” she says, giving him a sad smile before turning the corner and leaving his sight. 

Oliver comes back into the room to see Felicity is awake again and rubbing her eyes before moving the oxygen mask away from her face.

“Was that Laurel?” she asks.

He nods and sits back down next to her, trying not to worry about Laurel Lance and what Sara’s death is doing to her. He may not be in love with her anymore, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t still care about her and what happens to her. He hates seeing her like this and prays she’ll keep her promise and go to a meeting instead of finding another bar. 

He has to trust that she’ll keep his promise. He could go after her to make sure that she does, but that’s not what she needs and it’s not what he needs either. What he needs is laying in bed in front of him. 

“You should go with her,” Felicity says. “She needs you.” 

Felicity struggles to breathe, having exerted too much effort, and Oliver helps her get her mask back over her face. 

“I’m where I need to be,” he says, grabbing her hand and bringing it up to his lips to place a kiss on the back of it.   

He waits for her to fall asleep again before he pulls out his phone and sends a quick message to Digg to check on Laurel in a few hours to make sure that she makes it home alright.

****

Several hours and many false starts later, Felicity finally does wake up for real in all of her stubborn glory. She’s refusing her oxygen mask and is attempting to get out of bed, like she hasn’t been in a coma for the past few days. 

“I can’t… be… here,” she says breathlessly, struggling to catch her breath after putting so much effort in fighting off the doctor and nurses. 

“You are okay,” he says, silently pleading with her to stop fighting this because it’s nearly killing him to see her like this. He wants to give her what she wants, but he knows that she can’t leave the hospital yet. Not until she’s been cleared by a doctor. 

“No…” she practically whines as he tries to help the nurse get her back into bed.

“Felicity, look at me,” he says, pausing until she meets his eyes. “You’re safe here. I wouldn’t say that unless it were absolutely true. You know that. Relax. You’re making it worse.” 

He doesn’t mention how Corrine has let go of her because she kept shocking her, and not the painless, static electricity kind of shocks, but ones that genuinely burn. Even now, the hand against Oliver’s chest is sending painful bolts of electricity into him. 

Felicity looks around the room at everyone who is currently watching her with a heavy mix of concern and fear on their face. 

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “Essex Corp…”

“They won’t find you,” Oliver reassures her. “None of the doctors here will turn you in. Xavier checked everyone out.” 

It feels like the millionth time that he’s explained this to her by this point, but he knows she can’t help it. She’d been out of it each time she’d asked before. This is just the first time she’s had enough energy to truly fight back against being in the hospital. 

“The Professor… he’s here?” she asks, giving him a hopeful look, and the electricity moving through his body starts to lessen. 

“He was along with Kitty and some of your other friends. They had to step out for a bit,” he says, unable to explain more with an audience. The X-Men had left sometime yesterday in order to track down a missing girl a few towns over and haven’t been back yet. Kitty’s texted him frequently for updates, so he knows they haven’t forgotten about Felicity, but he thinks they are secretly using this as a way to give both him and Logan some space to cool down. 

“They’ll be back in a few hours,” he tells her. “Which is why you should let the doctors look you over.”

Felicity finally drops her hand from his chest and allows him to help her lay back on the bed. He winces at how heavily she’s breathing. 

“Did I… do that?” she asks, staring at him. 

He looks down to see that a hole has been burned through his shirt and his skin has a red pattern that looks similar to tree branches across it. 

“Its nothing,” he tells her, sending a scathing look to the doctor that looks like he wants to say more on the matter. Oliver knows his body well enough by now to know that he’ll heal. Right now, the focus needs to be on getting Felicity back in bed and checked out. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, looking like she wants to cry. 

“It doesn’t even hurt,” he says, kissing her on the forehead. 

She can clearly tell that he’s lying, but knows him well enough than to try and argue that fact with him. 

“Now promise these nice people that you won’t shock them so that they can check you over,” he says.

She blushes and nods her head in agreement and Corrine steps up to the bed to take her vitals. Once that is done, the doctor examines her as well. 

“Is she going to be okay?” Oliver asks.

“She should be,” the doctor says with a kind smile. “She still needs some rest and we’ll leave the oxygen on her until her O2 levels are back to normal, but based on our tests and the information provided by Dr. Jean Grey, I don’t see any reason why she wouldn’t make a full recovery.” 

Oliver breaths a sigh of relief at the news. It’s one less worry off of his plate. Now he can focus on trying to figure out exactly what this evolution has done to his girl. 

“So I can... go home?” Felicity asks hopefully. 

“In time,” the doctor says with a wink that only causes Felicity to grumble. “We’ll need to keep you at least another day for monitoring. But if your O2 levels return to normal and the rest of your vitals remain healthy, I’m sure we can have you out of here by tomorrow.” 

“Tomorrow,” Felicity says, unimpressed. “I don’t want... to spend... the night here.”

She looks up at Oliver with hopeful eyes, willing him to do something to speed her discharge along, but he’s not about to go against the doctors recommendation, especially when she’s still breathing so heavily.

“Hate to break it to you, but you’ve already spent several nights here and survived. Another night won’t kill you,” Corrine tells her. “Besides, I’m sure that this sweetie here will be more than happy to keep you company. He has barely left your side the entire time you’ve been here.” 

Oliver blushes at that and the fact that she has to use the word barely because he had, indeed, left her side once and still feels awful about it. 

“You were here... the whole time?” Felicity asks, her face scrunching up in confusion, as if she can’t comprehend what Corrine has just told her. 

“Most of the time,” he says, scratching the back of his neck nervously. 

“Well we’ll just step out of your hair and give you two time,” Corrine says to Felicity before turning to him and giving him a warm smile. “Maybe now you can stop worrying,” she tells him. 

Oliver nods his head, “Thanks.” 

The door shuts behind them and they are alone again. Oliver pulls his chair back up and sits down in his spot next to her bed. 

“I don’t understand,” she says, holding the mask away from her face so that he can hear her. “What happened?” 

“You were doing research and overextended yourself,” he says, which causes her to gasp and immediately sit up in bed, pulling the mask completely off of her. 

“Thea,” she says.

“It’s okay. Roy told me. We’ll find her later. For now, you need to rest and try to breathe.” 

He tries to help her put the mask back over her face, but she pushes him away. 

“Thea,” she repeats. She takes in a deep breath of air, but only succeeds in causing a coughing fit. 

“She isn’t in Europe. I know,” Oliver says, hoping that reassuring her that he really does know what happened to Thea will calm her down. 

It doesn’t. 

“Thea killed Sara.” 

That gets Oliver’s attention.

“What?” he asks, his hands dropping to his sides in shock. 

Felicity grabs the mask from where it’s fallen to the bed and takes a few deep breaths into the machine before she pulls it away again and repeats herself. “Thea killed Sara.” 

Oliver shakes his head. “No. No. That’s not possible. No,” he says. “You’re still out of it. You need to rest.” 

He moves to put the mask back over her face, but she reaches out a hand and shocks him before he can. “She’s with… Malcolm… Merlyn.” 

She’s not making any sense. Malcolm Merlyn is long gone. Oliver left him for dead two years ago, and even if they never found his body, that doesn’t mean he’s back. There’s just no way.

“I’m going to get the doctor to check you over again,” he says, remembering them saying something about possible brain damage from decreased blood flow.

“No...Oliver...” Felicity pants, barely able to talk she’s so out of breath. She reaches out her hand to grab his wrist. “Phone.” 

“What?” He looks down at her with narrowed eyes, trying to figure out what’s going on. Not wanting to believe that she’s lost her mind. He needs her back with her mind in tact. The doctor really should check her out in case there’s something seriously wrong. 

“Give me your phone,” she says, breathing heavy. He reaches for the mask, but she holds up a blue hand already sparking with energy in warning. 

“Give me… your phone… and I’ll… put on… the mask,” she manages to get out. 

“You shouldn’t be using your powers yet until Xavier can check you out,” he tells her, his hand already going to his pocket to grab his phone, knowing arguing with her is a losing battle. He pulls it out of his pocket and Felicity goes to grab it out of his hand, but he holds it out of reach. 

“Oliver…” she whines. 

“Mask first,” he tells her, sending her a look that he’s not going to budge on this. 

She pulls the mask on and doesn’t protest when Oliver readjusts it until he’s sure that it’s secure. He then hands her his phone. Images instantly dance across the screen as she uses her powers to look for something, but he’s not sure what. 

Her hands shake with power and her heart rate monitor begins to beep faster. 

“Felicity, maybe you shouldn’t,” he says, worried that she might overexert herself again. He can’t lose her, not when he’s just gotten her back. 

When the images dancing across his screen stop, his mind goes blank and everything around him disappears. Suddenly, the only thing he can hear is the sound of his heart pounding in his ears. 

On the screen is a video waiting to be played of a rooftop he now knows very well. The lighting isn’t great, but he can make out Sara’s figure at the edge of the rooftop and he knows what he’s about to watch. 

His hands start to shake and he feels his throat closing up in fear. He's watched a lot of people die before him but it never gets any easier. Their faces still haunt his nightmares and he knows once he watches this, he won't be able to unsee it. 

Sara Lance — the force of nature — is gone and he's about to watch the final proof of that. 

Seeing her frozen image standing there, alone, makes him want to vomit. He should have been there with her. She never should have had to face death alone. And if he'd been there? He could have stopped this. 

He doesn't think he can watch, but he knows that he has to. If he wants to catch Sara’s killer, he’ll have to watch this.

A hand to his elbow causes him to jump, looking around the room in surprise, but it’s still only him and Felicity. She goes to take the mask off to say something, but he stops her. 

“Don’t you dare,” he says, leaving no room for argument. 

Felicity must still be feeling the effects of everything, because she drops her arms and sags further into her pillows, the energy leaving her body.

Concerned with how tired she is, worried that all of her fighting has made her worse, he pockets the phone and moves to comfort her. He pulls the covers up over her and runs a hand through her hair, placing all of his focus on her, rather than on the phone in his pocket. It’s easier to ignore that problem and worry about her. Especially when there’s a chance that she hasn’t lost her mind and she’s really about to show him a video of Thea murdering Sara. 

It can’t be possible. Thea would never hurt anybody. And even if she wanted to, there’s no way that Thea would be able to kill Sara. Sara has been trained by the League of Assassins and Thea can’t even throw a decent punch. 

“Rest,” he says, trying to smile down at Felicity as if his entire world isn’t about to be shattered with a single video. 

She shakes her head. 

“You had me scared there for awhile,” he says, trying to pretend like everything is still normal, but failing miserably. 

Felicity reaches out her hand blindly, trying to find his own, until he takes pity on her and entwines their fingers. She squeezes his hand hard and with a determined look only she can manage, stares him down while gesturing to his pocket where he’s placed his phone. 

“I can watch it later,” he tells her, in no rush to watch one of his closest friends get murdered. It’s not a video he’d want to see under normal circumstance, much less now that there’s a chance his sister is to blame.

She glares at him and gestures to his pocket again, letting him know that she's not going to wait. When he doesn't immediately move, she starts to sit up.

“Okay, okay,” he says, moving to push her back down into bed. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone. He glances around the room to make sure they are really alone before he takes a steadying breath and presses play. 

He sucks in a breath as he watches three arrows sink into Sara’s stomach before she stumbles backwards off the roof. When her attacker turns around, Oliver’s heart leaps to his throat. 

“No,” he shakes his head disbelievingly. There has to be some kind of mistake. Thea doesn’t even know how to use a bow. There’s no way this is her. 

How could he have let this happen to her? Shouldn’t he have realized that the messages she was sending him from Europe were a lie? Did he do this to her? 

Did his lies drive her away from Starling and turn her into a killer? 

Felicity reaches out her hand to touch the phone and the screen changes to a complicated flight map. He’s not entirely sure what he’s seeing, but he can assume. No honest person has a need to fly from Corto Maltese to Caracas to Cartagena back to Caracas on to Tijuana, only to land just outside of Starling City the night before Sara was killed. 

“That’s her?” Oliver asks Felicity, not wanting to believe it. Felicity quickly changes the screen until another video appears.

He watches as a pilot gets off, followed by Malcolm Merlyn and finally Thea. 

His stomach drops to his feet in dread when he realizes that his sister hadn't just run away from home, she's been with her murderous father. There's no doubt in his mind, that if Thea killed Sara, Malcolm Merlyn is entirely to blame. 

“I'm going to kill him,” he growls. 

His fists tighten in rage while his mind races with a million different possibilities. Did Malcolm take Thea, or did she go with him willingly? And if she went with him willingly, why? Were things really so bad here in Starling for her that she felt going with the man who’d orchestrated the Undertaking was a better choice? 

Felicity pulls her mask off, but this time he's too caught up in his own thoughts to protest.

“You tried that once,” Felicity says, thankfully sounding a little more like herself. 

“I don't understand,” he says, still trying to process what he's seen. “This can’t be real.” 

“It’s real,” she tells him, reaching for him. He takes her hand in his and tries to allow the feeling of it to ground him, but it doesn’t work like it usually does. 

“What am I going to do?” he asks. Usually, in a crisis, he’s level headed. He’s the man with a plan. He has to be. But there’s no playbook for finding out your sister has been working with a madman and murdered your friend. 

“You bring her home,” Felicity tells him. 

He nods his head. She’s right. Thea obviously cannot stay with Malcolm for a number of reasons, not in the least of which is that she’s going to get herself killed. Oliver has to get her away from that monster. 

“Do you know where she is?” he asks. 

Felicity touches his phone again. Almost faster than he can catch, Thea’s text messages to him appear followed by a world map that zooms in closer and closer until a little red dot lands on Corto Maltese. Where the flight Merlyn had taken to Starling had originated from.

“Your flight leaves in three hours,” Felicity tells him. “The paperwork for QC hasn’t been finalized yet so you don’t have access to a jet but there a commercial flight leaving soon. I booked 3 seats.” 

The screen changes again to show boarding passes for himself, Digg, and Roy. 

A part of Oliver is already out the door and on that flight to save his sister, but the other part of him, the part that is only managing to hold it together because Felicity’s hand is currently clutching his own, is terrified to go. 

“We can’t leave right now,” Oliver tells her. “You’re still in the hospital.”

“Oliver,” Felicity says with more authority than any woman lying in a hospital bed after just waking up from a coma should possess. “I will be fine. Thea won’t be.” 

“She’s been gone for months, what’s a few more days?” he asks, but the words sound false even to his own ears. 

They aren’t coming from a place of logic, but a place of fear. Logistically speaking, he knows that he needs to go now. But when he thinks about leaving this room, his mind flashes back to the first time he’d fought Malcolm Merlyn and had nearly died. It had taken him 6 weeks of rehab to recover. 

Selfishly, a part of him just wants to stay here with her, even if he knows, in the end, he won’t. As much as he may want to retire the hood, he isn’t the kind of guy that would leave his sister in danger. 

“A few more days could mean a few more bodies,” she says, giving him a strange look, clearly confused why he isn’t already out the door. 

He gets it. It’s not like she knows that he’s just died at the hands of her best friend and is still recovering from that. It’s not like he’s let her see how much Sara’s death has affected him. She’s been asleep. 

“You need to go,” she tells him.

“What about you?” he asks, because that’s a whole other issue. He’s already spent the last several days trying to get over the guilt of leaving her when she’d been sleeping, now that she’s awake? 

“What about me?” she asks. “I’m fine. Unless there’s something you’re not telling me?” 

“Xavier said your powers have evolved,” he says. “It’s why you were asleep for so long.” 

She gasps in shock. He knows it’s a cheap shot. It’s an excuse not to go out there and face his fears, but it’s not technically a lie. He is worried about what her newfound powers will do. 

“Those were the exact words he used? Evolved?” she asks, looking nervous. He nods his head. 

“Why? What’s wrong?” he asks. 

She continues to look nervous as her eyes move up and down her body, looking for something. She raises her hands to stare at them for awhile before she finally drops them back down to the bed. 

“I’m sure it’s fine, Oliver,” she says. “I’ll have the Professor check me out later. You need to go. You’re going to miss your flight.” 

He lets out a deep sigh, knowing she’s right. As much as he loves Felicity and wants to be there for her, he also loves Thea. She’s the only family he has left.

“Maybe Digg should stay behind with you,” he says, trying to grasp at any solution that doesn’t make this totally suck. 

“The last time you faced Malcolm Merlyn, he nearly killed you,” Felicity says, not realizing how hard her words hit. How could she? She doesn’t know that he’s spent the last several days imagining his own death is imminent. 

“You are going with the entire team,” she tells him sternly. “We aren’t arguing about this.”

“You almost died,” he tells her. “Do you realize that?” 

He doesn’t realize until after he’s said it how harsh the words had come out. 

“And I’m alive now,” she says, looking at him with critical eyes. “Talking in complete sentences without my mask and all… Did something happen I’m not aware of?” 

Oliver debates telling her the truth about what really has him so frazzled, but it’s a conversation that needs a lot more time then they have.

Because, no matter how much he doesn’t want to take on Malcolm, he knows he would never turn his back on Thea. 

He takes a deep breath, preparing himself for what he knows may be the longest walk of his life. 

“I’ll tell you when I get back,” he answers her. 

When she gives him a worried look, he leans over and places what he hopes is a reassuring kiss to her forehead. He squeezes her hand one last time, trying to gain as much strength from her as he can before leaving. If he’s going to take Malcolm down, he’s going to need to be focused, something he hasn’t been feeling at all recently. He’s going to need to ground himself. 

Malcolm will take advantage of Oliver’s emotional state if he lets him and Oliver can’t afford that. 

As he goes to pull away, she reaches out to grab his wrist and pull him back towards her until her lips touch his in a goodbye kiss.

Somehow, without ever trying, she always knows exactly what he needs. 

“Don’t be a hero,” she tells him as they part. “Your ‘no killing’ pact doesn’t extend to men like Merlyn, even if he is Tommy and Thea’s father.” 

Oliver closes his eyes and lets her words sink in. He honestly hadn’t thought that far ahead. He doesn’t know what his plan with Malcolm is beyond not getting himself killed. If he wins, Oliver is going to need to do something with Malcolm.

He doesn’t know if he has it in himself to kill anymore. There’s enough guilt on his conscious and blood on his hands without him becoming a murderer again. But he knows that if it comes down to it, he will kill for Thea. He’s always been willing to do the unthinkable for the people he loves. 

He kisses her one more time before moving towards the door, his armor slowly falling back into place with each step he takes further away from her. He may not know if he wants to wear the hood anymore, but right now, that doesn’t matter. Right now, his sister needs him to the be hardened soldier the island turned him into. 

Oliver takes one last look back at Felicity, wishing he could stay at her side. Wishing he lived a life where he wasn’t constantly being pulled into the darkness. Where he could just be Oliver Queen without constantly having to also be the Arrow. He shuts the door behind him reluctantly and he can’t get past this feeling that closing the door on her is the final nail in his coffin. 

He forces that fear down into a box and prays that it will stay there. There’s work to be done and Thea doesn’t need the scarred, terrified Oliver Queen who nearly died on an island.

She needs the Arrow.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks as always to Mel and Megan

Oliver pretends to watch the clouds pass by out the window of the plane, but what he’s really watching is Thea’s reflection. 

She’s staring blankly ahead with empty eyes. Gone is the bright light with just the tiniest spark of mischief from her youth. Gone is the pain he’s seen her carrying around pretty much since he came back from Lian Yu. The misery that only grew when she found out the truth about her father and learned that Oliver had known about it. The utter despair she’d been drowning in since their mom died. 

Now, there’s nothing. Thea is gone and he doesn’t know how to even begin bringing her back. 

She hadn’t been like this when they first arrived. When Oliver had first stormed into Malcolm’s compound, he’d seen the genuine confusion at what he was doing in Corto Maltese and curiosity at how he’d learned to fight so well. Then, there was the absolute fear and fury as she realized that he was very likely about to kill Malcolm. 

He still hasn’t gotten over the shock of seeing her hold her own against Roy and Digg. Malcolm has turned her into an effective weapon and that’s terrifying. Thea is one of the kindest people he’s ever known. She wasn’t born a killer, Malcolm made her one and Oliver let it happen. 

But that’s a concern for another day, because Thea has been unresponsive since she found out what she’d done to Sara. She hadn’t put up a fight when they’d told her they were bringing her home. She hadn’t said a word as they packed her things. She barely answered the customs officer’s questions when they were at the airport. 

Roy is to her right, looking as lost as Oliver feels. As the start of the flight, Roy had attempted to talk to Thea several times, trying to make her feel better. He’d given up quickly when not a single attempt elicited any reaction from her. 

They may have gotten Thea back in body, but her spirit is long gone. 

Yet another failure that Oliver can add to his ever growing list. 

“This isn’t your fault,” Roy says to him, and Oliver can only scoff as he continues to stare out the window. 

Of course it’s his fault. Malcolm, in an effort to try and get Oliver to spare his life, had told him that the entire reason he had Thea kill Sara was to protect them. He said that he knew the League would go after whoever killed Sara, and that Oliver would do anything to protect Thea. He wanted Oliver to bring down Ra’s al Ghul. Thea had been little more than a pawn in an elaborate chess game in which Oliver was being manipulated into fighting Malcolm’s battles for him. If he hadn’t needed Oliver, Thea never would have been brought in to kill Sara. 

This is on Oliver… but it’s also on Malcolm. Which is why, of all the things Oliver feels guilty over, his decision to turn Malcolm over to the League of Assassins isn’t one of them. The League wanted Malcolm and Oliver wanted Thea’s freedom. It had been an easy trade. 

A part of him sincerely hopes the League kills him so that none of them have to spend their life looking over their shoulder and wondering when Malcolm will come into their lives and wreak havoc again. 

What’s the saying? Fool me once shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me? 

This is the third time that Malcolm has come in and shattered his entire world. The first time, he’d been none the wiser. Oliver couldn’t have known when he’d gotten on the Gambit that it had been sabotaged. He’d been a naive kid with no idea the depth of his parents’ sins. The second time, he’d been so unwilling to consider the fact that his mother could be involved in anything sinister that he didn’t find out Malcolm’s plan to level the Glades until it was too late to stop it.

This time he doesn’t have anyone else to blame. He should have followed up to make sure that Malcolm was actually dead. He should have checked in on Thea more often. Should have known she was lying to him about being in Europe. He should have known she was with Malcolm Merlyn and stopped this before it went too far.

The list of should have dones is a mile long. If he’d only been better, Sara would still be alive. Thea wouldn’t be in a million different kinds of pain right now. Felicity… God. Maybe Felicity would have never overexerted herself and triggered an evolution that she might not be ready for.

Which is why he can’t feel guilty about sentencing Malcolm Merlyn to death. This is one should have done that he won’t have to carry on his shoulders. He can’t go back in time and prevent Thea from killing Sara, but he did make sure that bastard never comes near his family again. 

Oliver might not have known before leaving Starling if he still had it in him to be a killer, but this trip has shown him how easy it is to slip back into that mindset. 

There isn’t anything he won’t do to protect the ones he loves. 

Oliver watches the distant look on Thea’s face and his heart clenches painfully. He knows what she’s going through all too well. Murder isn’t something that you can easily let go. It follows you around. Haunts you. 

That kind of pain prevented him from coming home to his family and drove him into joining the Bratva. 

That kind of pain made him retreat under the hood and resist everything that made him Oliver Queen his first year back. It turned him into a cold hearted monster. 

He doesn’t want that for Thea. He can’t let her slip away from him. 

“Can I get you anything to drink?” the flight attendant asks them, bringing him out of his thoughts. 

Roy meets his eyes over Thea’s head and he knows they are thinking the same thing. 

“Vodka,” they both say. 

After two days in Corto Maltese, Oliver feels like he’s aged 10 years and Roy doesn’t look any better. 

Across the aisle, Digg snorts before saying, “Better make it three.” 

“Thea?” Oliver asks, reaching out to place his hand tentatively on her knee. “Do you want us to get you something to drink?” 

She doesn’t respond. She doesn’t so much as look up. If it weren’t for the steady rise and fall of her chest and the fact that she blinks every so often, he’d be worried that she’d died. 

“Just the three then,” Oliver says, smiling at the flight attendant so that she’ll stop looking between them all nervously. 

He can’t blame her. Thea looks like she’s been drugged. They’d already been heavily questioned at customs and it wasn’t until Oliver proved that he was her brother and convinced them that he was bringing Thea home to take care of her that they were allowed on the plane. 

“Alright,” the woman says before moving on to take orders for the row behind them. 

“You doing okay?” Digg asks him. 

Oliver shakes his head and turns to look back out the window again. 

“Yeah, me neither,” Roy says. 

Their drinks arrive several minutes later and all any of them can say is “prochnost” before they down it and go back to sitting in silence.  

****

Five hours later, things remain pretty quiet. Digg has been asleep for several hours. Thea had finally given in and let herself sleep twenty minutes ago. Her head now rests against his shoulder. Roy is still too wound up to relax, but has at least pulled a book out to read so that he’s no longer staring at Thea like his entire world is crumbling in front of him.

Oliver gets it. He’s passed the time replaying the events of the last week in his mind, trying to work out how to pick himself up after everything that’s happened. It feels like an impossible task. How many times can he shatter and still expect the pieces to fit back together?

Each time he breaks, he feels himself slip away a little bit more, getting replaced by the mask. Slade had said it best. How many people can he lose before there is no Oliver Queen? 

His phone rings in his pocket, startling him. Roy looks over at him and gives him a confused look.

“Dude, I know this is my first time flying and all, but I’m pretty sure the flight attendant said during the safety briefing that you’re supposed to put your phone on airplane mode,” he says as Oliver digs into his pocket, trying not to wake Thea. 

“It was,” he says, confused. 

He finally gets it out of his pocket and his confusion disappears when he sees that it’s Felicity video calling him. Of course she would find a way to contact him when he’s 40,000 feet in the air. He presses accept and waits for the call to connect.

“If they kick you off the plane, I don’t know you,” Roy says. Oliver ignores him. 

He can’t help but smile when Felicity’s face appears on the screen. She’s still in her hospital room, but she’s wearing makeup and her own clothes which is an improvement from the last time he’d spoken to her early this morning. 

“Hey,” he says, looking around to see if anyone’s noticed that he’s talking on his phone. “How on Earth did you call me? My phone was off.” 

Felicity lifts her hand to the screen, her fingers sparking blue and winks before dropping her hand back down before any nosey passengers can see. 

“Are you supposed to be doing that?” he asks her, cautiously. 

He still doesn’t know what her evolution will mean for them and that’s terrifying. He’s anxious about her using her powers before they really understand what she’s capable of. For one, he doesn’t want her overexerting herself again. But he also doesn’t want her to accidently hurt herself or somebody else when she realizes that she’s stronger than she remembers. 

“The Professor wants to do more testing, but he thinks I should be okay to do little things,” she says. 

“Little things… Like turning my phone on from thousands of miles away?” he asks, wondering if she’s just trying to humor him so he’ll stop worrying or if she’s really become so powerful that something like that isn’t a big deal at all. 

“Your phone is connected to my network,” she says. “I programmed it so that I could power it on remotely at any time in the event that you were ever kidnapped and somebody tried to hide your location from us.  _ Digg _ could have turned your phone on remotely.” 

“And the video call in the air?” he asks, giving her a doubtful look. 

“It’s not the 90s. Your plane does have WiFi,” she says with a roll of her eyes. “I just tricked the system into thinking you’d already paid for it and bypassed the firewall capping your data usage and restrictions. It really wasn’t a big deal.”

He narrows his eyes at her, trying to figure out if she’s lying. She doesn’t look like she’s straining herself in order to talk to him, but he also knows that she’s a good actress. 

“I promise, Oliver,” she says with a knowing smile. “I’m fine. I know I might be stubborn, but even I wouldn’t push myself too far after just waking up from a coma.” 

“Okay,” he says, accepting her words as truth. “How are you feeling?” 

“Better now that they’re going to let me go home,” she says. 

He can see how relieved she is, and he wants to be happy for her, but his heart clenches painfully at the thought of not being there when she leaves the hospital. 

“They’re releasing you?”

She nods. “I’m just waiting for the nurse to come back with some paperwork and I’m good to go.”

He doesn’t want her to be stuck in the hospital any longer than she has to be. He wants her home. But that doesn’t stop his stomach from bubbling at the news. He was supposed to be the one to bring her home. He was going to be the one to help her inside and make sure that she was comfortable. He was going to cook her meals so that she didn’t have to strain herself. He was going to take care of her. 

They were going to have some real time together to heal. 

But Oliver’s gotten used to the things he wants taking a back burner to his responsibilities. Why should his relationship with Felicity be any different, he thinks, bitterly. 

“Are you okay to drive?” he asks. 

Felicity rolls her eyes at him like she always does when he’s being overprotective and she doesn’t think he needs to be. 

“Yes, I’m okay to drive. I’ve been cleared for all activity,” she says. “Not that it matters, because Logan won’t let me drive home anyways. He’s getting the car.” 

At the mention of Logan’s name, Oliver’s face drops and all sense of relief at knowing she’s okay leaves his body. His mind flashes back to his fight with Logan and the feeling of metal stabbing him in the chest. 

He closes his eyes as his chest burns from a wound that never really existed, but he can still feel nonetheless. 

“Oh, Oliver…” she says, her voice full of emotion. “Logan told me what happened.” 

Of course he had. Logan can’t even let Oliver have that conversation with his own girlfriend. He wonders what kind of a twist Logan put on the story to make himself sound better. What he said about Oliver to try and turn Felicity against him.

“It’s fine,” he grumbles. 

“It’s 100%  _ not _ fine and I told Logan as much,” she says, her nostrils flaring in the way that they only do when she’s truly pissed off and trying to hide it. “He took it too far. I don’t know what the Professor was thinking putting the two of you alone in a room together. That’s like putting a sheep in a T-Rex cage and expecting it not to tear the thing apart—”

Oliver feels a blade go through his heart all over again, but this time, Felicity is the one holding the weapon. Does she think that he just stood there like a victim as Logan killed him? He thought she had more faith in his abilities than that. Isn’t she the one that pushed him to keep fighting Slade when Oliver had lost all hope? Why? Because it had been her precious Logan that he’d been fighting? 

Oliver may have lost to Logan — a fact he’s still reeling from — but he’d been anything but a victim. 

“And don’t even get me started on Jean not doing anything,” Felicity continues to rant and he’s only half catching what she’s saying as he tries to recover from how hurt he feels at her lack of faith in him.

“If anyone was going to intervene, it should have been her. Logan would have listened to her. But of course, once again, she’d been too self-absorbed to do anything. I mean she’s always been selfish, but to not even—”

“Felicity,” he says, trying to get her to slow down so that he can follow what she’s saying. 

He usually can understanding her babbling just fine, but he also typically has some kind of context for what she’s talking about. Oliver has to admit, his knowledge of the X-Men is slim. He knows they’d all introduced themselves to him, but he hadn’t been that interested in anything they had to say. He’d been too worried about Felicity. 

“Felicity,” he repeats, and she finally stops talking. “Let’s talk about something else.” 

Felicity blinks, taken back, but quickly recovers. 

“Right,” she says. “How’s Thea?”

Oliver tilts the screen of his phone so that Felicity can see Thea sleeping on his shoulder before bringing it back to his own face.

“She looks…” Felicity trails off, and he can see that she doesn’t know what to say, which is a first for her, but Oliver understands. 

Thea doesn’t look well. Even in slumber, she is still drowning in the weight of everything she’s done. Felicity can see that, but he appreciates her hesitance to voice as much to him. 

Oliver may know that Thea is lost, but he’s pretty sure that hearing those words out loud will be  more than he can take. 

So instead, he nods in agreement and she changes the subject. 

“Detective Lance — sorry, Captain Lance stopped by today.” 

“Oh, yeah?” he asks, curious what the man had to say. 

Lance and Felicity have gotten along well enough ever since the night of the Undertaking, so Oliver wouldn’t have been surprised to know that the man came to visit her in the hospital under normal circumstances. However, Oliver is surprised to hear he came to visit her after finding out that Sara died. He hopes the man didn’t give Felicity a hard time. He knows from personal experience how awful it can be to be on Quentin Lance’s bad side.

“They are going to bury Sara tonight,” Felicity says softly, as if saying it quieter will make it hurt any less. 

It doesn’t. 

Agreeing to bury her feels like admitting defeat. While logically, Oliver knows that there is no bringing Sara back to life, it hasn’t stopped him from wishing for some miracle that this would all disappear somehow. That he’d wake up tomorrow and Sara would be standing over him, laughing at how broody he’d become over her death, claiming to have only pretended to be dead in order to escape the League. After all, hasn’t Oliver seen crazier things happen in his day? 

Oliver puts the phone on the tray table in front of him and runs his hands over his face. He feels the reality of her death hit him like a ton of bricks. 

“She’s really gone,” he says, his voice a whisper as his words trip over the enormity of his emotions. Considering how many times he’s thought he lost Sara before, it should be easier than it is. 

“Oliver, I’m really sorry,” Felicity says, her hand reaching out to stroke the screen. 

Oliver closes his eyes and tries to picture Felicity here with him, imagines her reaching out to cradle his face in her hands, but it doesn’t ground him. He needs Felicity here, not thousands of miles away. 

“I thought she’d beat the island with me,” he says softly. 

When Felicity doesn’t say anything, he continues, “I thought she was safe.”

God, how naive had he been to assume that her showing up in Starling City after the Undertaking meant that she was okay? How stupid had he been to tell her she was wrong when she first came back, claiming they were ghosts? He truly believed that she had made it out of everything — the Gambit, the Amazo, Lian Yu, the League. 

He wanted better for her.

From the moment he thought she’d died on the Gambit, he’d only ever wanted one thing for Sara: for her to be alive and well. 

“She never should have been on that boat,” he says. “But I thought she’d made it out alive. I thought we’d made it out of Lian Yu together. But we were both just working on borrowed time.” 

“What do you mean?” Felicity asks, her face concerned and he realizes he’s said too much. 

He can’t have this conversation with her. Not while she’s so far away and he’s surrounded by strangers. 

“Nothing,” he says, shaking his head. 

“Oliver—” 

If he knows Felicity, and he likes to think he does, he knows that she’ll keep pushing until he gives her something. And while he would love to relax into her arms and tell her everything that’s bothering him, now isn’t the time or place. 

“I’m just really going to miss her,” he tells her. It’s a fair compromise. It’s true, and it’s just enough that Felicity will let him get away with it even if she knows there’s more he’s not saying. 

“Of course you are,” she says, her voice full of care and concern. “It’s your Sara.” 

The way Felicity calls Sara his… it’s both so right and so incredibly wrong. Sara means so much to him. She was his best friend. She was the one that understood the monster within him and accepted it without question. She was a life raft when he was drowning. First on the island, and then again when she’d first come back to the city. She’d been there to pull him out when he’d been barely treading water. She was the symbol that not everything that was beautiful got destroyed by the Gambit. 

Sara had taken the pain of the Gambit going down and her suffering at the hands of Ivo and later the League and turned it into something more. She’d become something better. A symbol to aspire to. A protector of the innocent. She’d had no reason to put on a mask, and yet she did. 

He looked to her for guidance and acceptance, and she’d given it to him. Every time. Without question. 

In so many ways, Sara was his everything. So, it’s only right for Felicity to call her his. But she’s not  _ his _ . Not in the way Felicity is implying. 

Sara had been right when she’d told him that she wasn’t who he needed. That Oliver needed somebody who would help harness the light that was still inside of him. He’s pretty sure that Sara also knew that somebody was Felicity, even if Oliver wasn’t ready to accept that truth yet. 

“She and I don’t… It’s not like that,” he says. “I’m not sure it ever really was.”

In retrospect, he can admit that they were both using each other as a safety net. A familiar comfort in a terrifying situation. They loved each other deeply, but they were never in love with each other. He’s pretty sure that he can’t tell the woman he’s actually in love with his feelings for Sara without her getting the wrong idea. 

“I don’t know how to explain it,” Oliver admits.

“She understood you,” Felicity says. 

He nods, unable to speak around the lump in his throat. She gives him a soft, knowing smile, letting him know that it’s okay. That she isn’t upset. He should have known that Felicity would understand. Sara may have seen his darkness, but Felicity sees just as much of him.

“There’s always going to be a part of you that nobody else will ever understand,” she says. “But Sara came close. She was there with you for a lot of it and I’m sorry you lost that.” 

He nods again, feeling ridiculous for being unable to do much else, but he knows he’ll feel worse if he starts crying on this plane with a hundred strangers. 

“I know it’s not even remotely the same thing, but I’m here,” she says. “I’m always here.” 

Oliver presses the heels of his palms into his eyes and counts backwards from ten until he no longer feels like he’s about to burst into tears. 

“Thank you,” he says, once he feels like he’s regained control over his emotions again. “And it is enough. Truly.” 

She smiles at him and the two of them fall into silence.

He watches as Corrine comes into the room to give Felicity a clipboard full of paperwork and directs her where to sign. While Felicity works through the paperwork, Corrine turns to the camera and waves at him. 

“Didn’t I tell you that we’d get your girl better?” she asks him. 

“You did,” he says, happy to be proven wrong on that count. 

He imagines that he wasn’t the easiest person for Corrine to deal with while she cared for Felicity, but he’s grateful that Felicity had such a caring and understanding nurse at her side. One that helped her get well enough to go home.

“Thank you,” he says.  

“You just take care of her, now,” Corrine tells him before taking the clipboard of completed paperwork back from Felicity and informing her she is free to go.

Oliver waits as Felicity  asks a few more questions about the follow up appointments she’s supposed to make and when she’s done with that, she finally turns back to the camera. 

“So that’s it,” he says, smiling even though he hates that he’s not there with her. “You’re free.” 

“So it would appear,” she says. “Before I go... Lance requested Sara’s friend in green attend tonight. They are keeping it small, obviously, but Lance thought it was important that the team was there for her.” 

“Of course,” he says, feeling his stomach twist into knots. “I’ll be there.” 

Despite all of the death that he’s witnessed, he’s never actually attended a funeral. Not since he was 5 and his grandfather died, but Oliver had been so young when that happened and he hadn’t really known his grandfather that well. 

He’s always run from funerals. He ran from Tommy’s. Ran from his mother’s. 

He has no idea what to expect from tonight or how he’ll handle it, but he knows that he owes the Lance family enough to show up. 

“Okay,” Felicity says. “I should probably go before Logan starts thinking I’ve fallen back into another coma.” 

He pushes aside the jealousy he feels at Logan being the one to take her home. 

“Don’t even joke about that,” he says.

Felicity rolls her eyes at him, and he knows that joking is her coping mechanism, but he wants her to know that she doesn’t have to be funny for him. 

“I’ll see you when you get home,” she replies. “Travel safe.” 

“I will,” he says. “You, too. Please be careful not to push yourself too hard. I only just got you back.” 

“Says the pot to the kettle,” she says, raising his eyebrow at him in challenge. He doesn’t budge, he continues to stare at her until her shoulders slump and she nods her head. “I’ll be okay. I’ll see you when you get back.” 

What Oliver really wants to say is, ‘I love you,’ but they aren’t there yet. So he bites his tongue and raises his hand to say goodbye before hanging up.

“Was that your girlfriend?” Thea asks. Her voice startles him, it’s the first she’s spoken since getting on the plane. He hadn’t realized she was up. She hadn’t moved. 

“Felicity?” he asks, turning his phone back off and putting it in his pocket. “Yeah.” 

Even with everything weighing on his heart right now, being able to say that Felicity is his girlfriend brings a smile to his face. 

“Sara’s funeral is tonight,” Thea whispers, her voice shaky. 

Oliver nods, unsure how this conversation is going to go. They haven’t talked about Sara, not since Thea found out the news yesterday. 

“I want to go,” she says. 

He doesn’t know how to respond to that. He isn’t sure it’s the best idea. They still haven’t even talked about what happened yet, but Oliver knows one thing, the Lance’s can’t find out about Thea’s involvement in Sara’s murder. 

“I want to go,” she says, this time no longer whispering. Her voice is firm, accepting no alternative. 

“Are you sure about that Roy asks, but Thea silences his argument with a glare. 

“Thea,” he says tentatively, trying to figure out a way to tell her that it’s a bad idea. She’s barely holding it together as it is. While going to Sara’s funeral could potentially bring her closure, it could just as likely trigger a breakdown and the Lance’s don’t need that. 

Besides, how would they even explain Thea’s presence? Lance had asked for the Arrow’s appearance. As far as he’s concerned, that doesn’t mean Oliver Queen’s attendance — and it certainly doesn’t mean Thea Queen’s attendance. 

“I’m fine,” she says, harshly, shaking her head and staring at the seat ahead of her. 

“I would be really, really worried if that were true,” he says. 

Thea scoffs at that and closes her eyes, refusing to look at him or Roy. 

“I’ve been where you are,” he tells her quietly, not wanting to be overheard. “I know how badly you want to make this right. But this funeral isn’t about absolving your guilt. It’s about giving her family closure.” 

“Don’t you think they have a right to know?” Thea asks. “That they have a right to hear an apology from the person that…” 

Thea cuts herself off before she can start crying. Oliver wraps his arms around her shoulders, grateful when she allows him to pull her into a hug.

“Laurel loves you like a sister,” he says, rubbing soothing circles on her back as she cries into his chest. “I don’t want you to tell anyone about this. Especially Laurel or Lance.” 

“And why is that?” Thea asks, bitterness clear in her voice underneath the obvious sadness. 

“Because it would hurt you both too much,” he says. 

It’s the truth, but it’s also not the entire truth. He’s also terrified of either Lance finding out about Thea’s involvement in Sara’s murder and taking her away from him. Thea was a victim in this, but he doesn’t trust Lance to see it that way. And he certainly doesn’t trust Laurel to see it that way, not with her off the wagon.

“And Malcolm,” she asks, pulling away from him and wiping her eyes. “Are you going to tell them about him?” 

Oliver tenses, because he’s still not entirely sure where Thea stands in terms of Malcolm. While Oliver has no qualms about throwing him to the wolves, he is still Thea’s father. The father she’d willingly been training under for the last several months. 

But he figures that Thea ran away from home due to lies, so he’s determined to be honest with her from here on out. 

“Him, I have no problems throwing under the bus,” he admits.

“He didn’t kill her,” Thea whispers. “I did.” 

“Under his influence,” he says. “Don’t make this any harder on yourself than it has to be. Don’t take responsibility for his choices. You had no idea what you were doing. He did.” 

Thea nods, but he can tell that she doesn’t believe him.

Of all the ways that they are similar to each other, carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders was never a similarity he wanted to share. But come hell or high water, he’s determined to get her through this. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are love ;)


	6. Chapter 6

Oliver isn’t used to things going his way. He’s used to death, destruction, and utter mayhem. He’s come to accept that if something could go wrong, it will. Which is why, when Felicity opens her door, very much alive and well, Oliver lets out a breath of relief and falls to his knees. 

“Oliver?” 

“You’re okay,” he says, burying his face into her stomach and wrapping his arms around her legs tight. 

It feels like a miracle. Like somebody looked at the terrible hand he’d been dealt and decided that maybe he’d been expected to do too much. To handle too much. So they’d given him Felicity. 

“I’m fine,” she says, running a hand through his hair. It feels heavenly and he never wants to leave. 

He wants to curl up with her in bed and stay there forever, safe and secure. Because out there, the world is an awful, cruel place. Out there his best friend has been killed. Out there his ex-girlfriend has fallen off the wagon. Out there he almost lost his girlfriend. Out there he lost his sister’s soul to an abusive father who doesn’t understand the meaning of love. 

He can’t fix what’s been broken beyond these walls, but inside, he can hold her and pretend that everything will be okay. That maybe he does deserve more than this world has offered him. 

“We should go inside, people will talk,” Felicity says, trying to move them backwards and off of her porch, but he only tightens his grip. He’s not ready to let go. Not as long as he can still remember how helpless he’d felt when she’d been lying in that hospital bed unconscious. 

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry. I never meant for you to get hurt.” 

“You aren’t to blame for me getting put in the hospital,” Felicity says, her grip on him tightening. “I’m the one that overestimated my powers.” 

He shakes his head. “You were doing it for me.” 

Felicity doesn’t deny it. In fact, she doesn’t say anything, which just proves that he’s right. She really had been doing it for him. The confirmation doesn’t make him feel any better. It actually makes him feel worse. 

She reaches back to grab his arms and pulls him off of her. 

He stands up and is about to leave, sure that she doesn’t want him in her life anymore, but instead, she pulls on his arms until he’s walking into her place. She leads him over to the couch and pushes him until he takes a seat. 

“I guess this is our cue to go,” Kitty says. 

Oliver looks up. He hadn’t realized that Felicity wasn’t alone. Standing in the kitchen are Kitty and Logan. 

“I’ll call you both tomorrow,” Felicity says to them, walking to the door to show them out. “Thank you for bringing me home.” 

Logan watches him carefully, looking like he wants to say something. Oliver’s entire body tenses as he remembers the feeling of a blade going through his chest. Weird mutant mind game or not, that fight had been real for Oliver. Looking into the eyes of the man who’d almost killed him sends an icy chill down his spine. 

“You sure you’re going to be okay?” Logan asks, carefully walking to the door, his eyes not leaving Oliver. 

The implication that Felicity would be anything but safe with him would anger Oliver if Felicity hadn’t all but confirmed Oliver’s guilt with her silence. Maybe he does only bring pain and suffering to the people he loves. 

Maybe that’s his legacy under the hood: to destroy the lives of everyone he holds dear. He’s already destroyed Sara and Thea. Arguably, he’s destroyed Laurel as well. It would make sense that Felicity, the woman he’s currently in love with, wouldn’t be safe around him. 

“I call you in the morning,” Felicity says to Logan pointedly not answering his question. 

When the door shuts behind them, Felicity locks it before coming back over to join him on the couch. 

“I would have thought you would be with Laurel,” Felicity says. 

He shakes his head. “I’m the last person Laurel wants to see right now,” he says. “I wanted to make sure that you’re alright. I know that we talked on the phone, but it’s not the same as seeing you’re okay with my own two eyes.” 

“I’m okay,” she says with a tight smile. “The Professor wants to run some more tests on me, so I’ll be going to New York in a few days, but otherwise I’m good.” 

“You’re leaving?” he asks, his heart stopping in panic. She can’t leave. Breaking up with him is one thing. It’s understandable. But she can’t leave the city. He can’t do any of this without her. 

“Only for a few days. A week at most,” she says, holding her hand up, signaling he should calm down. “Don’t worry. I’m not leaving the team.” 

He tries to catch his breath but he doesn’t miss the way she only promises not to leave the team. 

“And what about me?” he asks, his voice small, terrified of her answer. 

“Oliver—” Her voice is strained, like she’s holding back tears. “Please don’t do this.” 

“Don’t do what?” he asks. 

A lone tear falls down her cheeks and against his better judgement, he reaches out and wipes it away, leaving his hand on her cheek afterwards. She leans into his touch before pulling away from him. 

This is it. She’s going to break up with him. 

He can’t say he doesn’t deserve it after what he’s done. 

“Sara died and now Thea is a murderer I guess… and if that wasn’t enough for you to push me away, there’s the whole Laurel of it all,” she says, standing up and moving away from him, crossing her arms. “I get it. I really do. It’s okay.” 

“The Laurel of it?” he asks, unsure of what it is she’s trying to get at. 

“Oliver, I know you,” she says. “I know you better than most people, so you don’t need to pretend. If you want to go to her, it’s okay.” 

“I feel like I’m missing something here,” he says. “I told you she doesn’t want me around.” 

“Her sister just died,” Felicity says, wiping tears from her eyes. “Of course she doesn’t want you around right now. She probably doesn’t want anyone around. But she needs you there and you need her. You always have. I just ask, as your friend, that you respect me enough to not come here and pretend. That you not stand by me out of some sense of obligation because of what happened between us or my hospitalization. I will get over it, eventually. But not if you keep coming over here and giving me false hope that it can work out between us.” 

Oliver feels his stomach drop to his toes as the realization of what she’s saying sinks in. 

Felicity thinks he’s still in love with Laurel. Felicity thinks he’s only here because they’d been dating and he’s feeling obligated to stand by her side because of their friendship. Because she’s been in the hospital. 

How on Earth can somebody so smart get things so incredibly wrong? 

“Felicity…” 

“No,” she shakes her head. “Let’s just agree that you don’t owe me anything. You gave me a wonderful orgasm and that was cool. Thanks for that. But that can be it. We can end things there. Skip the big dramatic Spiderman 2 ‘you and I can never be’ breakup. Okay? I don’t need a line… I just need some time.” 

“Felicity—” he starts to say but she cuts him off. 

“Please, Oliver,” she says, closing her eyes tight like he has noticed she does when she’s about to hear news she doesn’t want to accept. 

He stands up and walks over to her, hating how badly she’s hurting right now over a breakup that isn’t coming. 

It’s selfish of him. He really should be letting her go. Not to run into Laurel’s arms. He has zero interest of barking up that tree again. But because it’s not safe for her to be around him. 

But after everything he’s been through in the last week, he’s over being selfless. He just want to take whatever bit of life the universe will offer him and hold on tight. 

“Felicity,” he says her name softly, putting his hand on her shoulder. “Please look at me.” 

Slowly, she opens her eyes and meet his. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” he says, taking the time to say it slowly, making sure that she hears every word loud and clear. 

“But what about Laurel?” Felicity asks.

Oliver leans in and kisses her, smiling at the spark that ignites between their lips. “I don’t love Laurel.” 

He freezes as soon as the words leave his lips. He hadn’t meant to allude to the fact that he’s in love with her, not so soon after they’ve started dating, but there it is. 

Felicity seems to hear the words he didn’t say as well because her eyes get big and she sucks in a breath. 

“What about the danger?” she asks carefully. 

“I don’t know,” he answers honestly. “But what I do know is how I felt when I thought I’d lost you, and I never want to go through that again.” 

Felicity nods. “That’s how I feel every time I hear you getting shot at over the coms.” 

Oliver closes his eyes at her words, thoughts of his impending mortality weighing down on him, but he pushes them aside for now. He can’t make sense of those fears. He doesn’t know what to do with them. But Felicity thinking he’s going to leave her? That is something he can deal with. 

“We’re burying one of my best friends tonight and I just… I would die if that was you,” Oliver says, rubbing his thumb on her cheek bone, loving the way that it makes blue light dance across her skin. “Do you understand?” 

Felicity nods her head, then stands up on her toes and wraps her arms around his neck pulling him down for a kiss. 

He can hear her hands crackling behind him as she avoids touching him, but that doesn’t stop her from kissing him with everything she has in her. He allows his hands to fall to her hips, but when they start to travel around her back towards her ass, a large shock forces him to let go. 

“I’m sorry,” she says, pulling away from him. “The Professor said he’s going to help me try and figure out how to make that stop, too.” 

Oliver nods. “It’s okay. I’m just happy you’re alive. You can shock me all you want.” 

Felicity reaches up and pulls the collar of his shirt aside to reveal the angry red lines that still litter his chest from when she’d shocked him upon waking up. She winces at the sight and quickly let’s go of his shirt. 

“It’s fine,” he says before she can get too far into her head about it. 

She scoffs. “It’s not fine. You don’t have any concept of how easily I could hurt you. Seriously hurt you.” 

“You’ll learn to control it and we’ll find a way around the whole no touching thing,” he says. 

“My powers are stronger than they were before,” she says. “And I couldn’t always control them then.” 

“Well that’s why you’re going to New York, right?” 

“Yeah,” she says, but he can tell she doesn’t quite believe going to New York will help. 

“Hey.” He reaches out to grab her hand. “We’ll figure it out. Together. I’m not going anywhere.” 

She nods and gives him a small smile, letting him know that his words have been heard and taken to heart. 

“How are you doing?” Felicity asks. 

He shrugs. 

“I know you’ve been through hell this last week or so between Sara, myself, Thea, Logan…” 

Oliver wants to talk to her about it, but he doesn’t want to talk about it now. Not while he’s barely holding himself together with tape and glue and he still has to survive Sara’s funeral tonight. Not while he still hasn’t made up his mind about where to go from here. 

“We’re going to be late,” he says looking at the clock, changing the topic. 

“We’ve got over an hour,” she says pointedly. 

“I’ve got to figure out where I’m going to get a hood from now that mine is mostly destroyed and has been put into evidence,” he explains. “Quentin doesn’t want Oliver there. He wants the Arrow.” 

“About that…” she says, trailing off, letting him know that she’s done something without tell him. 

“What?” he asks. 

She walks over to her closet and pulls out a big box and hands it to him. He sets it down on the coffee table before opening it. 

“Lacroix shot you because you didn’t have your bow or a suit to protect you,” she explains as he pulls a new compound bow out of the box and looks down to see a new quiver and suit inside. 

He can’t breathe. Just looking at the suit makes every scar on his body twinge, reminding him of his fate. He sets the bow back in the box before it can slip out of his hands. If Felicity sees how shaken he is right now, she’s going to ask questions that he’s not prepared to answer. 

She got him a new suit. 

He should be grateful. Instead he feels like she just signed his death certificate. 

****

Oliver stands, shovel in hand, staring down at Sara’s grave. Seven years ago, the Lance family buried an empty casket and said goodbye to their daughter, never believing they would see her again. Last year, the world granted them a miracle when Sara came back to them. But there will be no more miracles this time. 

Oliver lowers himself into the grave they just dug up and opens the lid of the casket. He turns around to take Sara’s body out of Roy’s arms and places her inside gently. 

“No, this isn’t right,” Laurel cries. “It isn’t… She doesn’t even get a fresh grave?”

Her words are like a dagger to his heart. If he could take away her pain, he would. But there isn’t any fixing this. Sara is gone and she isn’t coming back. 

“Laurel,” Quentin says, his voice filled with emotion that only causes the grief in Oliver’s own heart to grow. “Please.”

Quentin pulls Laurel in for a hug and their combined sobs echo throughout the graveyard. 

There’s so much he wants to say to her. So much he wants to ask. 

Did it hurt? 

Was she scared? 

What happens now? 

In the end, he goes with simple. 

“Goodbye,” Oliver whispers, so that nobody else hears him. He kisses his fingertips and lays it against her cold forehead. 

He wastes no time in closing the casket again. Her body has already started to decompose and none of them need to remember her this way. They should remember her as she was: beautiful and strong. 

Digg reaches down and helps him out of the grave. 

Oliver brushes off his hands and stares at the headstone:

_ Sara Lance _

_ 1987-2007 _

_ Loving daughter and sister _

Laurel is right. It seems wrong that she doesn’t get more than this. That she doesn’t at least get a new headstone with the proper date, but he knows why she doesn’t. The world can’t know about what happened to Sara Lance. Not without people asking a whole lot of questions. 

It’s not fair.

For the last year, Sara has fought by his side to protect this city. The Canary — or as the people in the Glades like to call her, the Woman in Black — has been a fierce defender of the defenseless. The world should know that was Sara. She deserves to die a hero’s death. Not as some girl who stupidly boarded the yacht of her sister’s irresponsible, billionaire boyfriend. 

When the world talks about Sara Lance- it should be with reverence. Not as the punchline to a joke.

It’s not right… But this is the path they’ve chosen for themselves. One of smoke, mirrors, and lies. 

Oliver wonders, if Sara ever doubted putting on her mask like he’s doubting his.  

Tonight, the hood feels like it’s a thousand pounds. The quiver at his back feels like it’s suffocating him. His mask is too tight. The Arrow doesn’t fit him anymore and it’s slowly killing him. 

Felicity sniffles and wipes a tear from her eye as she walks over to the pile of dirt they’d dug up and takes a handful. She reaches out with a shaky hand and drops it on Sara’s casket. The sound of the dirt hitting wood feels like a knife to his chest. 

Will Felicity be pouring dirt over his own grave? 

Is that the fate he’s sealed for the two of them? 

“It’s a Jewish custom,” she explains to Quentin and Laurel. “I know she wasn’t, but it feels right.” 

“Thank you,” Quentin says, his voice breaking over the words. “Thank you all for coming.” 

“Sara was our friend,” Digg says, reaching out to put a comforting hand on Lance’s shoulder.

“Nobody will ever really know who she was,” Laurel cries, shaking her head in disbelief. “It’s not fair. It’s not fair.” 

Oliver doesn’t have any words to give her. He can’t comfort her in the way she needs. And that’s not just because he’s in dressed up as the Arrow now and Quentin can’t know who he is. 

Laurel doesn’t need him. 

She needs somebody to support her and care for her, but that somebody isn’t him. All he’s ever brought her is more pain. 

As everyone surrounds Laurel and Lance and offers them words of comfort, Oliver remains where he is, staring down at Sara’s grave. 

It feels like the world is pushing down on him. Like he’s got one foot in the grave already and the world is just waiting for an excuse to give him that final shove. 

And maybe that’s his fate. Maybe, after everything he’s done, he doesn’t deserve any better. Thea is at home, inconsolable, because Oliver hadn’t protected her. Laurel is a complete mess and has fallen off the wagon because he couldn’t save Sara. Felicity is facing a terrifying future because they still don’t know what her evolution will bring. An evolution that would never have been triggered if he’d just kept a closer eye on her and been more careful with his words. And Sara… Sara is gone. 

It’s all on him. 

Oliver has always carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. 

When he was young, it was the substantial expectations that went along with being a Queen. His parents never let him forget that, along with all of the privilege their money afforded him, there was also a responsibility there. He would grow up and take hold of the company one day, just like his father had taken the company over from his grandfather. He would marry well and have a family to parade around during the holidays to reassure investors that the Queens were family men. 

That weight had lead him to the Gambit, where he learned a new definition of the word heavy. 

Lian Yu had taught him several things, but none more than the lesson of how to be a man. Being a man meant taking responsibility and learning how to survive. It meant looking after himself rather than expecting others to take care of him. Lian Yu had taught him humility, which he desperately needed, but it also taught him guilt. Guilt at being unable to save his father. Guilt at not being strong enough to help more. Guilt over Yao Fei. Guilt at getting Shado killed. Guilt over losing Slade. 

There was no shortage of things to feel guilty over on Lian Yu. 

Then came Hong Kong and ARGUS, then his time with Shadowspire. During his tenure under Amanda Waller’s thumb, Oliver re-learned what it was like to have weighty expectations on his shoulders that he couldn’t live up to. Only this time, his failures didn’t end up with his dad having to bail him out of jail and his mother’s disapproving look. They ended up with people he used to call friend dead. 

In fact, the only time in his life where he’s ever not felt the weight of the world was when he was with the Bratva. His time in Russia had taught him how to disconnect. There, he hadn’t been Oliver Queen, billionaire. He hadn’t been Oliver Queen, castaway. He hadn’t even been Oliver Queen, ARGUS assassin. He’d only been Bratva. He’d had no name. He’d had no home. He’d had no family. He’d only had the brotherhood. 

The blood he’d shed as a member of the Russian mafia may never come off of his hands, but he sometimes thinks that it was his easiest year away. There, nobody had expected him to play the hero. He didn’t have to debate over what was right or wrong. There was only vengence. It was horrifyingly violent. The images of death and destruction haunt him in his dreams to this day. But it taught him how to separate his emotions from his mission. 

Oliver could do that again. 

He could shut the world out. 

But is that really what he wants? As tempting as it is to shut off his emotions and stop caring about the world, is it enough to make him confront his fears over putting back on the hood? Is it so freeing that he’s willing to die for it? 

Oliver feels a tap on his shoulder and when he looks up, Felicity is there with a watery smile. 

“Are you okay?” she asks him. 

He shakes his head. He’s not okay, but that’s not the point. 

She shouldn’t be the one asking him that. Not after everything she’s been through. She’s only just been released from the hospital this morning, she should be at home resting, not standing outside on a cold night burying a friend. 

She deserves so much more than this life. 

They both do. 

Yes. Oliver has always carried the weight of the world on his shoulders, it’s just never felt quite so heavy before as it does now. 

He undoes the quiver at his back and let’s it fall to the ground. He takes a tentative breath, then another, deeper one. 

Satisfied with the result, he then removes the hood, causing Felicity to gasp. 

“What are you doing?” Felicity asks, reaching out to put her hand on his arm. 

“Detective Lance is here,” she whispers, her eyes going to him nervously. 

He doesn’t respond. None of that matters right now. Not when he’s been drowning for far too long and is so close to the surface. Instead, he reaches up to unzip his jacket, the sound of it like music to his ears. He slips it off of his arms and holds it out in front of him, over Sara’s grave. He then let’s go, and watches in awe as it falls down, covering her casket. 

Maybe this way, she won’t have to be alone, entirely. A part of him can always be with her, protecting her in death in a way he couldn’t in life. 

It’s satisfying in a way he didn’t expect, and that’s how he knows this is the right decision. He lifts up his hands and removes the final part of his cover. He takes off his mask and drops it into the grave as well. 

He doesn’t have to do this anymore. Not if he doesn’t want to. 

“Queen?” Lance gasps in surprise. 

“Oliver,” Digg says, his voice filled with concern as Felicity pulls on his hand, trying to get his attention. 

“I don’t want to die,” he says as tears fall from his eyes. 

He doesn’t hear any of their responses after that. He’s too busy relishing the rush of air that fills his lungs for the first time in years. He presses his hands to his lips one more time before laying them against Sara’s headstone. 

“I’m sorry I couldn’t save you,” he says. He reaches over and takes a handful of dirt and holds it out over her grave, allowing it to seep past his fingers and fall over onto his hood and her casket. 

When the dirt is all gone, he stands up and wipes his hands. And with that, he turns and walks away, each step feeling like another weight off of his shoulders. 

He can finally breathe. He’s free. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone that went on this journey with me. I know that it wasn't always fun. I know it was incredibly heavy (thus the name), but it was an important part of Oliver and Felicity's story, so thank you for sticking with me through it. Up next, we'll get some lighter one-shots for our lovely Olicity to make up for all of the shit they've just been through.


End file.
